Apple sent out press invitations Thursday for its Worldwide Developers Conference, confirming that the event will run June 8 through 12 at Apple Park in Cupertino, with the keynote opening at 10 am Pacific on Monday the 8th. The announcement was accompanied by the usual cryptic marketing image, this year showing a glowing ring that developers immediately started parsing for hints. For the first time in WWDC history, the invitation explicitly used the phrase "Apple Intelligence 2.0," which analysts at Wedbush and Morgan Stanley took as confirmation that the overhaul rumored since last fall will be the headline.
The stakes for Apple at this year's conference are higher than any keynote in recent memory. The company has watched Google roll out Gemini 2.5 across Pixel and Android, Microsoft deeply integrate Copilot into Windows 11, and Anthropic ship Claude Opus 4.6. Meanwhile Apple Intelligence, the generative AI platform the company introduced at WWDC 2024, has been widely criticized as underwhelming. The initial Siri rebuild announced in 2024 slipped from its original iOS 18 window into iOS 19 and has still not fully shipped, and the features that did arrive have been dogged by hallucinations and slow response times.
Reports from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and from The Information suggest that Apple is planning a ground up rebuild of Siri using a new on device foundation model developed jointly with a partner that has not been publicly identified. Multiple sources have told both outlets that the new Siri will support true multi turn conversation, will be able to take action across apps without requiring developers to build explicit shortcuts, and will be capable of reading and summarizing content on screen in any app. A private beta is reportedly already running internally at Apple with roughly 800 employees.
Hardware is expected to play a supporting role. Apple is reportedly planning to announce a new M5 chip at WWDC, with on device AI performance roughly three times that of the M4. The M5 is expected to ship first in an updated MacBook Air this summer and then in iPads and Macs through the fall. iPhone 18 models coming in September will use the A19 Pro, which analyst Ming Chi Kuo says will include significantly expanded neural engine capacity specifically tuned for the new Apple Intelligence features.
Developers are watching closely because Apple's approach to AI has so far kept third parties at arm's length. The company has not allowed developers to build against the core Apple Intelligence models directly and has limited third party integration to a handful of features like writing tools and image generation. Rumors circulating on developer forums suggest that WWDC 2026 will finally open up foundation model access through a new framework that would let third party apps tap into the on device model for things like summarization, translation, and content generation, all running locally without sending data to Apple servers.
The privacy story is the angle Apple keeps coming back to. The company has repeatedly argued that running generative AI on device using Apple silicon is fundamentally more private than cloud based approaches, and executives are expected to hammer that point throughout the keynote. Apple Intelligence also includes a feature called Private Cloud Compute for tasks that require more power than on device can handle, and that system has been audited by independent security researchers. Whether that story is enough to convince users who have been experimenting with Gemini or Claude to come back to Siri remains an open question.
Financially, Apple has every reason to get this right. iPhone upgrade cycles have lengthened over the last three years, and Wall Street has been pricing in an expectation that a compelling AI story will drive a super cycle of upgrades. Services revenue remains the company's fastest growing segment, and any new AI features that can be monetized through subscriptions could add meaningfully to that line. The stock is currently trading at roughly 28 times forward earnings, above its ten year average, and analysts are divided on whether that premium is justified given the ongoing competitive pressure.
The conference itself will run as a hybrid event, with the keynote and State of the Union streamed globally and a limited in person component at Apple Park for invited developers, media and Apple Design Award winners. Registration for online sessions opened Thursday evening and is free for all registered Apple Developer Program members.