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Apple (AAPL) hasn’t had a great start to the year, losing nearly 5% so far. But that hasn’t stopped analysts at Evercore ISI from calling AAPL stock their top hardware pick for 2026. The bullish catalysts sound familiar — strong product cycle and healthy consumer demand — but there’s one factor that investors desperately wanted to hear about: artificial intelligence (AI).
Apple’s Siri assistant is set to receive an AI upgrade, which has excited users around the world. This won’t be a small tweak, either. The company is carrying out a deeper integration of generative AI and striving to provide a better contextual understanding through its voice assistant. By doing so, it intends to compete with modern AI models like Gemini and ChatGPT.
