Apple scores poorly on “future-readiness” metrics, as Siri AI overhaul leans on Google Gemini

Apple landed near the bottom in the Wall Street Journal’s inaugural “Best Companies for the Future” ranking of S&P 500 firms, according to a syndicated summary published Monday by 24/7 Wall St. The assessment, compiled with Bendable Labs for the Journal’s Leadership Institute, is designed to measure how well companies are positioned for an AI-driven future across several dimensions, including AI readiness and strategic transparency.

The ranking evaluates companies using 30 metrics grouped into six categories: AI readiness, innovation, talent readiness, financial fitness, supply-chain resilience, and corporate agility. InvestmentNews, covering the same WSJ effort, reported that Nvidia topped the overall list and dominated sub-scores tied to AI readiness, financial fitness, and agility, with a cluster of megacap firms in the top tier including Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta.

In the 24/7 Wall St. write-up, Apple’s placement is attributed to two related criticisms: the article says Apple trails peers on AI advancement and also does not disclose major plans in a way the index favors. It characterizes Apple’s position as weak relative to megacap technology companies, while acknowledging that the company’s reputation for consumer hardware remains strong.

Apple has been rolling out generative AI features under the “Apple Intelligence” banner for its iPhone, iPad, and Mac. In a June 2024 press release, Apple said Apple Intelligence is integrated into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia, and that it uses on-device capability alongside “Private Cloud Compute” for privacy-focused processing. In an October 2024 update, Apple said the first set of Apple Intelligence features included a more natural Siri, along with writing tools and notification and message summarization.

Still, the future-readiness question is partly about timing and execution. In March 2025, Reuters reported that Apple delayed AI improvements to Siri until 2026, without citing a reason. That delay matters because voice assistants are often used as a front line for consumer AI adoption, where rapid iteration can influence both user experience and developer expectations.

More recently, Reuters reported that Apple plans to use a 1.2-trillion-parameter AI model developed by Alphabet’s Google to help power a revamp of Siri. Reuters said the companies were finalizing a deal worth about $1 billion per year for access to Google’s technology, described as a stopgap until Apple’s own systems are ready. Reuters also noted that Google had no comment and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The evidence also leaves several gaps that matter for how these rankings should be interpreted. The 24/7 Wall St. summary does not publish Apple’s specific category scores or fully explain what “strategic transparency” means in practice, and Apple has not publicly detailed the commercial terms of any reported Gemini arrangement in a way that can be independently verified from company statements. As a result, the strongest claim supported by the reporting is that Apple is being evaluated as behind peers on AI readiness and disclosure, not that Apple has definitively missed every AI milestone.

For investors and customers, the next checkpoint is straightforward but not immediate: whether Apple’s Siri rebuild in 2026 delivers the conversational capabilities Apple has promised, and whether Apple provides enough product and roadmap detail to avoid being penalized on “future-readiness” frameworks that reward measured, trackable progress. Separately, the broader WSJ ranking suggests the market may increasingly differentiate companies not only by how much they invest in AI, but also by how quickly they translate AI roadmaps into usable, externally observable products.