Last Friday, I got a chance to check in with Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, at Courtney's iPhone glass manufacturing facility in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. We've been broadcasting that interview over the course of multiple days, because when you get an interview with Tim Cook, it's market moving and you need to see every bit of it. This stuff is priceless. It does also explain some of the big move we've seen in the stock lately. We've got one more piece of this huge interview with the CEO of arguably the best company in the world. Take a look. Did you ever think, Tim, that the role of a CEO would be a global ambassador and also someone who has to try to make peace with India, with China, with the White House? This isn't what you got in this business for.
You know, it's an incredible job and it's a privilege of a lifetime to have it. The people that I get to work with are just unbelievable. We trust each other. We collaborate with each other. And I just can't imagine life without it.
Well, a lot of people, I think, would say when you hear something like, and we did this, we heard this on Truth Social: 'I have long informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect the iPhone will be sold in the United States, will be manufactured and built in the US, not India.' Now, that's the kind of thing where you read it on Truth Social. You say, geez, maybe I ought to reconfigure things, right?
Yeah, it's definitely a motivator. Definitely a motivator. But what we were doing, Jim, since we announced a $500 million commitment toward the beginning of the year, we were continually working to come up with more ways to bring manufacturing into the United States. It's not really bringing it back because that manufacturing was not here to begin with. Right. And we came up with several things that we could do more of. One was the glass that you saw today. And we're thrilled with how this project is going. Another is stitching together the end-to-end silicon supply chain. I'm really pleased with how that's going. And yet another one that's a little different than both of those is a deal that we did with MP Materials to do rare earth magnets in the United States. And so a lot of advanced manufacturing can be done in this country and be done competitively in this country now.
So a shareholder should feel that even though these international markets are so huge, it's okay to make these things here and okay to commit $600 billion. It was a big deal to commit $1 billion in 2017 when we first saw $600 billion. That's a huge chunk of any country.
It is a huge one. But we're an American company and we're a proud American company, and we want to do as much in the United States as we can. Not only for product that we sell in this country, but for product that we sell around the world. And so, you know, we do have a global footprint and sell quite a bit of product outside the United States.
Is the administration keeping track of how much you're spending?
We're in constant communication. We have a very good relationship. It's very positive. And to their credit, they are focused on regulation and trying to decrease the amount of regulation that it requires to build a new factory, to build a new data center, etc.
Did the tariffs work in the sense that they are bringing companies back? And they gave us a level playing field, which I think you and I would always think if the US had a level playing field, we would win.
I think they're a motivating factor for many businesses. And I hope that there are other factors as well. Like for example, in this factory, what you get a sense of here is it's not just one thing, it's innovation plus cost competitiveness plus quality. It's the sum of all of these things coming together.
Well, let's talk about the phones we saw today. There's a sense from the critics that they don't have enough AI. I always think if they don't have enough, then why isn't everyone going to Samsung? The numbers don't show that people are fed up with your AI.
There's a lot of AI in the iPhone. And what we do is try to do things that are in the background for people and then surface them when they're in the app. And so we integrate AI across our operating system. You might come across it in doing something like Smart Replies or mail summarization. You might come across it if you wanted to do some visual intelligence, like saying, what is this piece of machinery over here or whatever? You may come across it in the future with live translation. Right. And so there's all kinds of things built in. And then in addition to that, we're working on a personalized Siri that will be available next year. And we are very excited about this.
Will I be able to use a personalized Siri to connect in a way that I do with Perplexity or ChatGPT? Well, you have to develop that. Or after that incredible decision by a district court judge saying, listen, the relationship you have with Google is fine. Yes, they should pay you. Well, the tables turn. A lot of people thought you would have to buy somebody. But the way I look at it, if that decision, people should want to access your 1.2 billion users. To me, it went from you paying them to they paying you.
You can already because we've integrated OpenAI into the operating system. You can already use OpenAI with Siri. And so that's available today. But there will obviously be a finer integration in the future.
But there are discussions right now about the way to go, I presume.
We're having great discussions. I can't really talk about.
