Apple’s AI ‘soap opera’ is finally ending: Wedbush

Apple spent a year grading its unshipped products. Wedbush told the market to be graded on what the company develops next, insisting that Siri AI upgrades will still be coming over the summer and that by 2026, Apple’s AI platform will stop being a promise and start becoming a product.

For a company built on perfect timing, Apple is now in the exact opposite position: worried about its biggest artificial intelligence upgrade slipping away. A new round of Siri delay rumors – reports that the “Personalized Siri” feature continues to hit testing snags – caused Apple’s market value to fall by about $202 billion in one session, as investors viewed the feature’s timing as a credibility test. Investors can’t directly assess “Apple’s AI future,” so they use the only visible, date-stamped thing: Siri ships — or slips.

In a new Wedbush report, analysts led by Dan Ives seek to overturn Apple’s fragile AI playbook, arguing that the recent sell-off is “unwarranted” and that Siri’s “soap opera” will eventually move into a 2026 release. Wedbush identified 2026 as “the year Apple gets into the AI ​​game,” arguing that Wall Street mispriced a rollout that still looks on track, even as the company’s “highly anticipated AI features” — including improved Siri — are being phased out across multiple iOS updates.

This “even” takes a lot of work. Internal testing issues may push some of the “Personalized Siri” features for iOS 26.4 (expected in March) to iOS 26.5 in May, and some of those features may be pushed to iOS 27 in September. Apple is trying to keep this story within the year: Apple told CNBC it still plans to launch a smarter Siri in 2026 (although it didn’t specify when 2026 would be). At present, it seems that artificial intelligence will not be included in Apple’s March 4 product launch again.

But every misstep changes the likelihood of (a) iPhone upgrades and (b) new paid service tiers. Bulls see a pattern; skeptics see a pattern.

To prove his point, Ives pointed to new external AI leadership within Apple Park, the strategic importance of the rebuilt Siri architecture, and the “solidified” Google partnership – a multi-year agreement in which the next generation of Apple’s base models will be based on Google’s Gemini model and cloud technology; the companies said these models will help support future Apple Intelligence features, including Siri.

Apple doesn’t want to win the model arms race on paper, but rather win distribution: deliver AI through the device layer, wrapped in privacy promises, tied into the ecosystem, and paid for through Apple’s billing relationship. Investors want to know whether Apple can create an artificial intelligence platform for developers and consumers, making the iPhone the gateway to the era of consumer artificial intelligence.

There’s also evidence that Apple is trying to change Siri’s form, not just its functionality. Bloomberg reported in January that Apple plans to transform Siri into its first artificial intelligence chatbot, code-named Campos, embedded in iPhone, iPad and Mac operating systems.

But for now, Wedbush is changing the conversation from “Can Siri be smarter?” and “Does Siri need to be paid for?” The report said that “artificial intelligence monetization” could add $75 to $100 per share in the next few years, and the company expects to launch an artificial intelligence-driven subscription service in the fall, targeting a customer base of 2.5 billion iOS devices and 1.5 billion iPhones.

Other analysts pointed in the same direction. Bernstein raised his Apple price target to $340 from $325 and wrote, “The bigger story will be the launch of Apple Intelligence/Siri 2.0 sometime this year.” If Apple proves endpoint is a durable service enabler, a phased rollout is viable.

The bear’s case is simpler, and uglier. Apple has taught consumers to wait and investors to pay for the inevitable. If 2026 becomes another year of staged demos and postponed dates, the market will continue to view Siri as a referendum, and the stock will continue to trade as if it was accompanied by a quarterly data release.

Ives warned that any major delays would be a “heavy burden” on the stock, and recent trading suggests investors will continue to check points until Siri is back on track. Wedbush said the sell-off was a sentiment swing, AI platforms were the focus, and the rewards were subscriptions and services layered on top of a massive installed base. As it stands, Apple doesn’t need to win every benchmark. But it does need to deliver the ending – and make it worth the wait.