Report: Apple looked into building its own AWS competitor

The Information is out with an interesting report about how Apple has considered spinning up its own developer cloud services, in a move that would put it against some of its competitors’ biggest revenue streams. Here are the details.

Project ACDC

As reported by Aaron Tilley, Apple’s Project ACDC (which stands for Apple chips in data centers) would not be that different from Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s Azure, or Google’s Cloud Platform:

“The idea discussed was for Apple to rent out servers running on Apple’s own chips, said three people involved in the effort. That reflects Apple’s successful development of its own chips, which have given its phones and laptops a big edge over rival devices—and which are also now being used in Apple’s data centers for some artificial intelligence services.”

According to the report, Apple has considered this in the “past few years”, and would offer the service as a cheaper and more efficient in-house alternative to other cloud competitors.

The internal path to ACDC

One big reason Apple was even entertaining the idea is performance. Executives believed Apple silicon could offer better AI inference performance at a lower cost, especially as demand ramps up for efficient, high-volume AI workloads:

Apple’s chips are efficient at running many types of inference, which means using pre-trained AI models to interpret new information, such as computer vision found in the Vision Pro.

Apple started using its own chips inside its data centers with the launch of Private Cloud Compute (the system that powers server-side requests for Apple Intelligence), then expanded it to the Siri team:

“Siri was the first team to try out servers powered by Mac chips for text-to-speech capabilities. The servers provided a performance improvement in accuracy and cost reduction compared to traditional servers with Intel chips, said people involved in the project.”

Soon, services like Photos and Apple Music also got access, to improve performance in areas like search.

Apple even explored offering this same cloud setup to outside developers, without spinning up an enterprise sales force. Instead, the existing Developer Relations team would manage access, creating a more Apple-like developer experience than what AWS or Azure offer today.

Status: Unknown

The Information says that Project ACDC’s status is unclear, since Michael Abbott, the Apple executive who championed the idea, left the company in 2023. The report states that while discussions continued into the first half of 2024, it’s currently not known whether the initiative is still alive.

Of course, all of this also ties into Apple’s broader services ambitions. As App Store fees face regulatory pressure and its $20 billion Google search deal sits in the DOJ’s crosshairs, Apple is looking for new ways to grow services revenue.

For Apple, a developer-focused cloud built on Apple silicon would be a natural extension of that strategy. For developers, this could mean not having to rely entirely on costly GPU instances from third-party cloud providers.

Regardless, today’s report shows just how seriously Apple is thinking about turning its silicon advantage into new sources of revenue. This probably won’t be the last time we hear about this.

Are you a developer? Which cloud provider do you use? Would something like Project ACDC be appealing to you? Let is know in the comments.

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