As the world's second-largest company by market cap, Apple appears to be the very definition of successful. But Peter Thiel isn't overly impressed. The billionaire investor says that Cupertino has done "nothing new" since co-founder Steve Jobs died in 2011, though he did call it a "pure, well-run value stock."
Speaking in an interview with author Walter Isaacson on The Builders podcast, Thiel said of Apple, "In my telling, it did nothing new after Jobs."
The PayPal co-founder added that the smartphone was a great invention, one that left Apple with little to do after its launch.
"Then it was just scaling and branding and building it out over 15 years or whatever," he said.
Thiel said he believes that the more eccentric, controversial CEOs like Jobs and Elon Musk are "way better for society" than the likes of Tim Cook, Apple's former CEO and now executive chairman of its board.
Cook was certainly known more as a safe and steady CEO compared to the unpredictable Jobs. But the soft-spoken Alabamian oversaw the introduction of some of Apple's biggest technologies during his tenure.
There was Apple Pay in 2014, now used by up to 800 million people worldwide. The Apple Watch followed in 2015 and remains the world's most popular smartwatch. Apple Music, AirPods, Face ID, the HomePod, Apple TV+, and AirTags also arrived during Cook's time, and he was CEO in 2020 when Apple made the monumental shift away from Intel to its highly regarded in-house Apple silicon.
One area where Apple stumbled during Cook's reign has been its AI efforts. The company took years to deliver the Apple Intelligence features it had promised, and even faced a lawsuit over the situation. There were also multiple delays to the AI-upgraded Siri. Siri chief Mike Rockwell previously said this was because an earlier version, built on the old architecture, failed to deliver the intended experience.
Thiel did at least acknowledge the value of Apple stock. Apple shares started the year at $271 and are now trading at around $347, an increase of 28%.
This isn't the first time Thiel has criticized the iPhone maker. In 2017, he said the age of Apple was over. Since then, the company's stock price has increased approximately 1,066%.