Apple Car failure secretly built Apple's AI future

Apple's canceled self-driving car project, scrapped in 2024 after over a decade and $10 billion in spending, inadvertently laid the groundwork for Apple Intelligence. The push for Level 5 autonomous driving forced engineers to solve massive AI processing challenges, leading directly to the Neural Engine now found in every modern Apple chip. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the research also influenced Apple's Ultra-class Mac chips and the custom processors powering Apple Intelligence servers. What is remembered as a costly failure may prove to be one of Apple's most consequential long-term investments in AI hardware.