Wall Street just boosted Apple's price target, and the reason might surprise you

Apple seems to be undergoing some serious changes in its internal structure, according to rumors and recent announcements by the company itself. 

Now, investment firm Wedbush has increased its Apple price target because it considers that the changes in the exec team mean we're gearing up for the success of Apple Intelligence in 2026. 

Investment firm believes all the changes inside Apple are going to bring success

Back in October, the firm raised its target from $310 to $320, all because of how well the sales of the iPhone 17 phones were going. Now, the analysts working at Wedbush believe the success will continue, including the iPhone 17 sales success, but there may also be a lot of changes on the generative AI front. 

For a while now, the Cupertino tech giant has been claiming that the context-aware Siri is going to finally come in 2026. Wedbush, however, seems more focused on the partnership that's expected to happen between Apple and Google. 


OpenAI's ChatGPT is already available in Apple Intelligence. Despite that, the investor firm claims that Gemini will be Apple's exclusive AI partner. It's not entirely clear what the distinction between the two partnerships is going to be, but the hint is that Gemini may be more embedded, or could even replace Siri.

Staff changes and potentially, changes in strategy  

Wedbush notes the departure of the previous head of Artificial Intelligence at Apple, John Giannandrea, as well as the arrival of Amar Subramanya at the company. 

Previously, Subramanya was working at Microsoft, and before that, at Google's DeepMind AI division. According to the investment firm, these changes indicate that Cupertino is acknowledging its need to get people from outside the company to help with AI. 

Nevertheless, the analysts at the firm think that there are quite a lot of unknowns still in Apple's plans about AI. The analysts claim that the Cupertino giant has the opportunity to take its AI efforts to the next level after... well, a pretty disappointing start to it all. 

The firm also addresses another hot topic around the company's restructuring. The analysts believe that Tim Cook isn't going anywhere just yet. According to them, Cook will stay in his position as Apple's CEO until at least 2027. Reportedly, that would be because Cook may insist on seeing Apple through the AI transition. 

Apple Intelligence has to be successful in 2026 

Apple gave huge promises with the context-aware Siri back in 2024, even before the iPhone 16 was official. As we all know, those promises didn't come to fruition, and the whole ordeal became quite the scandal. Honestly, I'm still disappointed, and we're all still waiting on that context-aware, Apple Intelligent Siri. 

The virtual assistant is far behind competitors, and Apple, in general, is behind the competition in terms of generative AI. Maybe next year is when the iPhone maker manages to shine. Hopefully.

There have been quite a lot of people leaving the company recently. Hopefully, all of this can help Apple make it up to its fans for the disappointment of broken promises. 

I was, personally, super-excited when I first heard what Apple had planned for Siri, and was eager to try it out. Nowadays, I'm not even remotely hyped about it, but still, I hope that Gemini and the restructuring in the company can make something cool happen.