Apple is the most brand-aware IT company in the world. It is likely they simply recognized the synergy of partnering with the creators of “ChatGPT” that holds the mind space equivalently to “googling” but for AI among their customers.

In Apple’s presentation they specifically say that the OpenAI integration is akin to a plugin and they may have other providers, especially for domain specific knowledge in the future.

The third party providers is smart imho. Apple take on little risk, and it allows them to avoid being reliant on any one provider.

> Mistral is in the EU which doesn't have a stable regulatory regime.

I guess the US's "no regulations ever" can be considered a stable regulatory regime.

They have a deep hatred for Meta, so Llama is out

Making your competitor solely responsible for an important component in your ecosystem is bad news, and ClosedAI is basically an arm of Microsoft only separate to shield them from legal concerns around copyright. (And if the component is not that important, which is possibly the case with LLMs, then why spend so much money and undermine user privacy?)

> Google is a major investor in Anthropic.

And Microsoft is an even bigger investor in OpenAI. Why couldn't Apple join Google in this?

There's also Meta, whose money is as endless as Microsoft's.