Apple may be widely considered a laggard in the AI race, but it is still making bank by taxing artificial intelligence apps distributed through its App Store.
Data from the mobile app market intelligence firm AppMagic shows that generative AI apps paid Apple close to $900 million in App Store fees last year, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Apple typically charges a 30% commission on app sales and in-app purchases, but the figure drops to 15% for small developers earning less than $1 million per year through the App Store Small Business Program.
About 75% of the revenue that Apple collects from gen AI apps distributed through its App Store comes from OpenAI’s ChatGPT, followed by xAI’s Grok at 5%.
AppMagic’s data shows that Apple raked in $35 million from gen AI apps in January of 2025 before soaring to a high of $101 million in August. Sales have been in decline, largely due to a slowdown in ChatGPT downloads.
Among the hyperscalers, Apple guided the lowest AI spend this year at just $13 billion. Meanwhile, rivals Amazon, Google and Meta plan to allocate $200 billion, $180 billion and $122 billion, respectively, to AI CapEx in 2026.
Earlier this month, reports emerged that Apple is mulling deeper ties with Google, as former employees revealed that only 10% of the iPhone creator’s cloud computing capacity is being used on average.
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