🍎🧠 Apple’s Plan to Rival OpenAI

Sep 07, 2025

Happy Sunday,

Slowing job growth and rising unemployment have solidified expectations for a Fed rate cut in September. At the same time, OPEC+ plans to boost oil production despite falling prices, signaling a shift toward reclaiming market share. Apple is also making strategic moves, developing an AI-powered search tool to revamp Siri and compete with OpenAI and Google.

We cover this all in the week’s Sunday Primer. Enjoy.

- Humphrey & Rickie

Market Report

Continued Slowing Job Market Prompts Rate Cut Certainty

US job growth cooled significantly in August, as employers added only 22,000 nonfarm payrolls, falling short of the 75,000 estimate. The unemployment rate also rose to 4.3%, the highest it has been since 2021.
The report's weakness was also amplified by substantial downward revisions to prior months, which revealed that employment in June actually shrank for the first time since the end of 2020.
- Over the last three months, job growth has averaged 29,000 per month.
The number of people who have permanently lost their jobs and an increase in long-term unemployment (27 weeks or longer), have climbed to levels not seen in years.
Investors have fully priced in a quarter-point rate cut at the Federal Reserve’s upcoming September 16-17th meeting and now anticipate a total of three cuts by the end of 2025.

OPEC+ Agrees to Increase Oil Production, Reverse Halts in October

OPEC+ agreed in principle to increase crude oil production again in October, a significant shift away from defending prices to prioritizing market share.
On Sunday, delegates from the alliance, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, are expected to approve an increase of about 137,000 barrels per day, unwinding 1.66 million barrels a day of supply cuts far earlier than originally scheduled.
The decision comes as a surprise to many analysts and occurs despite oil prices already having fallen 12% this year amid concerns of a looming supply surplus.
- The market's surprising resilience to previous production hikes likely has given the group confidence to continue increasing output.
However, the actual volume of new oil hitting the market may be less than the announced figure, as several member nations lack the spare capacity to increase production, leaving Saudi Arabia as the primary source of the additional supply.

Apple Plans AI-Powered Web Search Tool for Siri to Rival OpenAI

Apple is developing its own AI-powered web search tool, internally dubbed "World Knowledge Answers," which it aims to launch in the spring of 2026.
- This new "answer engine" will be a core feature of a long-delayed, major overhaul of the Siri voice assistant, designed to provide users with direct, summarized answers from the internet in a manner similar to ChatGPT.
To power this ambitious revamp, Apple is collaborating with its long-time partner and competitor, Google. The companies have reportedly reached an agreement for Apple to test a custom-built Google Gemini model for key Siri functions, such as its summarization capabilities.
- While relying on Google's model for web-based knowledge, Apple still plans to use its own in-house technology for searching a user's personal on-device data to ensure privacy.