Apple's abandoned car program becomes a foundation for its AI chips

The Verge reports that Apple’s self-driving car program never shipped a vehicle, but its early need for powerful on-device AI processing helped drive the Neural Engine that later appeared in the iPhone X and Apple’s M-series chips. The report says Apple is now accelerating M7 development, with significant Neural Engine upgrades and a possible M7 Ultra server product that could support up to 1.5 TB of RAM.

Key details: Apple’s car project pushed early work on on-device AI processing, The Neural Engine became central to Apple’s privacy-focused AI hardware story, Apple is reportedly accelerating M7 development and exploring an M7 Ultra server product.

Why it matters: Apple’s AI gap is often framed as software weakness, but its hardware path may define how much AI can run privately on devices and Apple-controlled servers.