Report: Apple's high-end M7 chips could potentially rival NVIDIA's best

Apple's next-generation AI servers, due in 2029, will reportedly be built on M7 Ultra chips.

When it comes to AI software, Apple might lag behind some of its competitors, such as Google and OpenAI. Despite launching an upgraded version of Siri powered by Google Gemini AI models, Apple's AI software still needs refinement. However, when it comes to AI hardware, Apple's chips may not bow out of the competition anytime soon.

The next generation of Apple chips could be about to get a massive boost for the AI era. Bloomberg already reported that Apple is apparently gearing up to launch M6 chips later this year, but the company won’t release the M6 Pro and M6 Max variants. Instead, Apple wants to jump to the M7 series.

In the latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman revealed that Apple’s decision is driven by AI and the processing power the M7 series is expected to offer. Gurman said Apple has been preparing “major neural-processing upgrades for the M7 family and ultimately decided those improvements were important enough to justify accelerating the next generation rather than completing the M6 lineup.”

The M7 Ultra is said to be Apple's high-end processor for next year, and Gurman claims that, in terms of performance, it is close to NVIDIA's Blackwell. It reportedly supports up to 1.5 terabytes of memory, which is double the capacity planned for the M5 Ultra. The M7 Ultra will also reportedly lay the groundwork for the next generation of Apple AI servers, codenamed J246, which are expected to debut in 2029.

Gurman added that Apple has begun developing M8 series chips with even more AI capabilities. These chips will reportedly use a 1.4nm manufacturing process and debut in 2028.

In March this year, Apple launched the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. As for the M5 Ultra variant, the chip is reportedly set to debut in the Mac Studio later this year with up to 768GB of RAM.

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Posted Monday 13 July 2026 at 6:17 pm AEST (my time).

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