Apple shares suddenly dropped a few minutes into its WWDC keynote on Monday. The culprit appears to be one word: Siri.
About six minutes into the presentation, Apple's stock abruptly fell more than 2.5%, from roughly $206 to below $201. That's the equivalent of about $75 billion in market value.
Just seconds earlier, Apple software chief Craig Federighi was on stage recapping the Apple Intelligence features the company had already rolled out in recent months, such as Genmoji, smart replies, photo cleanup tools . Then he pivoted to Siri. That's when things got awkward.
"We're continuing our work to deliver the features that make Siri even more personal," Federighi said. "This work needed more time to reach our high quality bar, and we look forward to sharing more about it in the coming year."
Translation: Apple's long-promised AI revamp of Siri still isn't ready. Investors probably didn't like hearing that.
"WWDC laid out the vision for developers BUT was void of any major Apple Intelligence progress," Dan Ives, a tech analyst at Wedbush Securities, wrote in a note to investors.
"We get the strategy but this is a big year ahead for Apple to monetize on the AI front as ultimately Cook & Co. may be forced into doing some bigger AI acquisitions to jumpstart this AI strategy," Ives added. "We have a high level of confidence Apple can get this right but they have a tight window to figure this out."
Wall Street has been hoping and waiting for big AI advances from Apple for about a year. Expectations were not that high that WWDC 2025 would produce massive new progress here.
However, competitors such as Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI are racing ahead, with new generative AI models, chatbot upgrades and features coming out across the industry every week. Instead, on Monday Apple reiterated its message that major AI features are still in the works.
Earlier this year, Apple had to pull ads after an industry watchdog said the company's "available now" claims about Apple Intelligence, including next-gen Siri, overstated what was actually ready.
The delay underscores a deeper problem: Apple has been slow to build the infrastructure and foundational models that power modern AI.
"The silence surrounding Siri was deafening; the topic was swiftly brushed aside to some indeterminate time next year," Forrester analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee told Business Insider. "Apple continues to tweak its Apple Intelligence features, but no amount of text corrections or cute emojis can fill the yawning void of an intuitive, interactive AI experience that we know Siri will be capable of when ready. We just don't know when that will happen."
Apple's old playbook was to stay quiet until everything was perfect. But in the AI arms race, waiting may not win. These days, just admitting you're not ready is sometimes enough to wipe out tens of billions in market value.
"The end of the Siri runway is coming up fast," Chatterjee said. "Apple needs to lift off."
Jordan Hart contributed reporting.
