AdrianHancu
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has canceled work on its electric vehicle project and shifted some of the employees to work on generative artificial intelligence, Bloomberg reported.
Apple Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, who had been in charge of the initiative, known as Project Titan, made the surprise announcement on Tuesday to roughly 2,000 employees, the news outlet added, citing people familiar with the matter.
Shares of the Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant moved into positive territory following the report, while other automakers, including Tesla (TSLA), GM (GM) and Ford (F), traded higher.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Seeking Alpha.
Apple had spent billions of dollars on the initiative, something that Chief Executive Tim Cook once called “the Mother of all AI projects.”
Many of the employees working on the car project will now go to work for Apple executive John Giannandrea, who heads up the tech giant’s Machine Learning and AI Strategy unit.
It was reported last month that following recent board meetings, Apple had set a release date of 2028 set for the Apple Car, and the level of autonomy has been downshifted dramatically to Level 2+ from Level 4. The project is said to be in a make-or-break position, but still moving forward.
Apple has firmed up its comments around generative AI in recent memory, including on this month’s earnings call, amid concerns it has fallen behind its peers in the space.
“In terms of generative AI … we have a lot of work going on internally as I’ve alluded to before,” Cook said on the earnings call, adding the company has “some things that we are incredibly excited about that we’ll be talking about later this year.”
