The boss of Apple today hailed the “unbelievable” tech and creative talent in London and said the capital would continue be a “great hub” for the AI revolution transforming the everyday lives of millions of people.
CEO Tim Cook, who is due to meet the King at the company’s Battersea Power Station headquarters tomorrow, is on a visit to London this week as Apple Intelligence, a new AI system built into iphones, ipads and Mac computers, launches in the UK .
Speaking exclusively to the London Standard, he said: “You can feel innovation here, you can feel the creativity here, you can feel the vibrancy in the developer community here, the curiosity that's here.
“These are all of the traits that make things exciting about the embrace of technology, the fact that the future is going to be better than the past. This feeling is critical for a company like ours.”
Apple, which has more than 40 stores in Britain, more than any other country in Europe, claims to have invested more than £18 billion in the UK over the past five years.
On London’s role in the AI revolution he said: “The skills are here, we’re growing our engineer population, we’ve doubled it in the last several years, a lot of those folks are working on Apple Intelligence so, yes, I see London as a great hub for artificial intelligence, and we're certainly here to to take advantage of that.”
But he cautioned: “I think the key on regulation is to keep it lightweight, you never want to suffocate the innovation because London is and should be in the future a great hub for innovation.”
Mr Cook, 64, who was speaking during a visit to the Caius Centre in Battersea, which trains local young people in digital skills and and it backs with donations of iPads and MacBooks, said: “London is critical to us. We have many different functions here representing different parts of Apple and its also the creative community in London.
“We’ve been in the UK for 40 years and we got our start serving the creative community, so it means everything to us to be here now and serve everyone because we’re all creative at the end of the day.
“We’ve democratised photography, we’ve democratised making movies, we’re making movies and TV shows in London now, we’ve tripled the number of of productions in the last two years, this our second largest market for Apple TV +.”
He added: “The talent in London is unbelievable, people love living here and I couldn’t be more excited to be back here particularly on this day when we’re bringing Apple Intelligence to the UK.
Cook also spoke of his affection for visiting London, saying: “Oh, I love it all. I mean, I really I do come often and I find that it's an intersection of a British city and a global city. There's so many people from different walks of life here, and everybody gets along fairly well and the creative community here is unbelievable.
“It has all of the aspects that we love. We film here. I was on the set of Silo yesterday, visiting with the crew and the the cast members there. And they love working here.
“I think there's a rivalry with different cities, obviously. and I think London should just keep focusing on what you're doing today because it's working. I mean, we wouldn't be doubling our engineering population if we weren't a believer in it. “
Cook, who joined Apple in 1998 and succeeded Steve Jobs as CEO in 2011 shortly before the co-founder’s death, said the key to London’s continuing success was “access to capital and the the whole focus on lightweight regulation is important.”
However, he ruled London replacing Apple’s base in Cork in Ireland as its official European headquarters, saying: “Well, we we like to think of what we have in London is a kind of headquarters as well, we've invested significantly in Battersea and there's so many functions involved there. But I think what we have in Ireland kind of stays in Ireland and what we have in the in London kind of stays in London.”
