The rapid development of artificial intelligence has plunged tech giants into unprecedented anxiety. From the wavering of Google’s search hegemony to the lag in Apple’s AI progress to the decline in Tesla’s sales, these former industry hegemons are facing disruptive challenges. This article provides an in-depth analysis of the dilemmas and struggles of the Big Seven under the AI wave, and discusses who may become the “Nokia” of the AI era.
Artificial intelligence is menacing, but tech giants are in an unprecedented “AI anxiety”. From Google’s search crisis to Apple’s AI lag to Musk’s Tesla sales decline, the former overlords are facing disruptive challenges. Who will be the “Nokia” of the AI era?
The midlife crisis is menacing, and even the technology giants of the past cannot escape.
A second ago, you were the young man who subverted the traditional industry; In the next second, as Musk said, “stare into the abyss, chew on glass, and watch the wave of disruption approach our doorstep.”
Several large companies, known as the “Big Seven in the US stock market”, seem to have fallen into this situation.
Just like those middle-aged people who are “reluctant”, they have to rack their brains to figure out what threats AI really poses to the company.
So the question arises –
01. Who will become the “Nokia” in the AI era?
This trend has become more and more evident in recent weeks: on May 7, Alphabet’s (Google) stock plummeted by more than 7%. The reason was that an Apple executive revealed that Google search traffic on Safari fell for the first time in 20 years.
Although Google later clarified that their search volume was still growing overall, including traffic from Apple devices, it was already to no avail.
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The threat of AI to Google has become a reality.
On the 7th, Google fell more than 7%
On the other hand, Apple is not much better, and its head Cook is trying to buy time for the company.
During a recent earnings call, he called on investors to be patient with Apple’s slow progress in artificial intelligence.
Meanwhile, Meta founder Zuckerberg is trying to paint a bright future for his advertising empire, packaging it as an “AI companion” that provides companionship for lonely people.
In Zuckerberg’s vision, AI friends will be more common than real people, and chatbots will replace counselors, advertising agencies, and programmers.
“As far as I know, the average American has less than three friends, and the average person actually needs more, maybe 15 friends,” he said in an interview with podcast anchor Dwarkesh Patel.
In another podcast with media analyst Ben Thompson, Zuckerberg continued: “For those who don’t have counselors, I think everyone will have an AI.”
Heartily, Zuckerberg’s predictions of how people interact in the future have been mixed. He was very successful with Facebook in the 2000s, and then made a lot of money by acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp.
However, more than a decade later, in 2022, he declared that a large number of people will interact in virtual worlds and augmented reality in the future, which has not yet been realized.
Now, the Meta CEO is fully committed to the development of artificial intelligence, and Zuckerberg revealed that nearly 1 billion people currently use Meta AI every month.
However, their latest Llama 4 model fell short of expectations. After a new evaluation by LMArena, the ranking fell out of the TOP 10. The former glory of the Llama 3 family has not been successfully replicated.
Even Musk, who has always been positive, is a little anxious.
After returning to Tesla from his DOGE adventure, he faced a decline in both stock price and sales.
Tesla’s sales in the first quarter of 2025 reportedly fell by 13%, the company’s lowest quarterly sales figure since 2022; Net income for the quarter fell 71% compared to the same period last year, and it was on the verge of loss.
Faced with such a situation, Musk promised to launch a driverless car.
“We are still far from death, and we have nothing to do with it!” He told analysts.
To be fair, these giants are far from the point of collapse.
They also have reason to be optimistic: they are the backbone of American companies with amazing profits, and the combined market capitalization of the seven companies is about $7 trillion.
02. The dilemma of innovators
However, they stand collectively at a crossroads, and their respective responses are like case studies tailored to the 21st-century edition of the classic business school book, The Innovator’s Dilemma.
In his book, Clayton Christensen tries to explain how a new product or service can replace existing industry players by creating new markets.
The book made the word “subversion” a mess on the board of directors – although it may not always be used as the author’s intention.
His core theory is that successful companies that seem to have everything going well can be defeated by smaller companies.
These small companies are not bound by existing rules and often rise with new technologies or models. For example, Netflix challenged Blockbuster’s brick-and-mortar model through a mailing subscription service.
Many people use this book to explain the dotcom bubble that swept the Internet, and that wave gave birth to today’s Silicon Valley heroes.
The “dot-com bubble” refers to the phenomenon in which the valuation of technology stocks soared rapidly in the late 90s, driven by the bull market in the US stock market. The tech-heavy Nasdaq rose from less than 1,000 points to more than 5,000 points between 1995 and 2000. However, by 2000, the situation began to change. The bubble burst between 2001 and 2002, and the stock market entered a bear market
The situation today is somewhat similar. Just as the Internet brings infinite possibilities as a new technology, AI also carries countless hopes.
But at this early stage, it is unclear how AI will be applied, who will lead it, or when it will happen.
For example, Pets.com was favored at the beginning, but did not become a winner. That’s the difficulty.
For marketing, Pets.com launched sock puppets
Even Christensen himself has a hard time predicting disruptors, such as Apple’s iPhone.
When the iPhone came out in 2007, the Harvard professor did not see it as a threat to traditional phones. In fact, this device ushered in a new era of mobile computing and the app economy.
However, if companies reach customers differently, the app market can change dramatically. For example, AI agents could completely disrupt the existing model of the App Store.
So far, Apple’s answer to AI seems to be too hyped.
In a recent earnings call, Cook explained to investors the reason for the slowness of AI: “We need more time to get the job done to meet high-quality standards.”
03. Cook had a bad year
Cook has had a bad time this year.
First, Siri doesn’t deliver on those cool features that Apple promises at all.
Immediately afterwards, tariffs hit, which could significantly erode iPhone profits. The judge also hinted at an investigation into Apple’s antitrust issues, and Apple’s collaboration with Google’s search engine was also criticized for its fat meat.
By the way, there is also a device called “Vision Pro”, does anyone remember?
Among all these troubles, AI may be Apple’s biggest threat in the long run.
Apple’s trillion-dollar market capitalization empire relies on excellent products, and now, these are inseparable from AI.
The problem is that Apple is not ranked in the AI field at all.
Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and every few weeks launch eye-catching new AI tools and updates. What about apples?
There have long been concerns about Apple’s Apple Intelligence for iPhones, Macs, and iPads — falling behind in AI.
Apple didn’t launch the first Apple Intelligence features until October last year, missing out on the iPhone 16 released in September, months later than competitors like Google and Samsung started incorporating more AI tools into their phones.
By the end of 2024, most Apple Intelligence features, such as generating custom emojis or using ChatGPT through Siri, were already available.
On March 7, Apple announced that it was postponing its original Siri upgrade plan, which was supposed to allow Siri to provide users with more personalized answers and perform actions within the app on behalf of the user.
Meanwhile, Apple’s competitors are further personalizing their AI assistants.
Google recently added the ability to customize responses based on user search history to Gemini.
Last month, Amazon also announced Alexa+, a new version of Alexa that remembers user preferences — like their favorite restaurants or music artists — to use when answering questions.
Such a setback is unprecedented for Apple.
04. Google: What about AI+ advertising?
Google at least launched Gemini.
But it’s unclear whether this AI app can save its core business – advertising. After all, advertising brought in most of Google’s revenue last year.
Statistica’s revenue distribution of Google business units from 2017 to 2024
And in an era where people are increasingly inclined to ask GenAI questions directly, such as “What is ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma’ about?” The model of selling ads by relying on users clicking on links is facing huge challenges.
Just ask Google.
When Gemini first came out, it was embroiled in controversy due to bias in chat responses – CEO Pichai admitted that these performances were “unacceptable”, and the company subsequently apologized repeatedly and promised improvements.
Although Google has been deploying AI for a long time, the release of the product coincides with industry concerns that OpenAI has taken the lead.
Pichai wrote in a statement at the time: “No AI is perfect, especially in the emerging stage of the industry’s development. But we know that the public expects more from Google, and we will stick to improvement no matter how long it takes. Sometimes, what we call disruptive breakthroughs actually consolidate existing businesses.”
Recently, Google lost two antitrust lawsuits and faced the fate of being split.
Even Chrome could be acquired by rival OpenAI.
Even Apple, a partner for many years, is behind the scenes.
On May 7, Reuters reported that Apple plans to add an AI search option to the Safari browser.
This is a major blow to Google, which relies heavily on its iPhone customers for its lucrative advertising business.
05. Giants are subverted by AI?
Surprisingly, however, no mainstream platform seems to have found a winning formula yet.
This has given hope to young Silicon Valley venture capitalist Sarah Guo and others who are trying to make a name for themselves by investing in the next generation of AI startups that could disrupt giants.
In the latest episode of the “Bold names” podcast, she said, “Strategically, you can find many reasons to deny the existence of a company: for example, Microsoft, Apple or Google should develop this product themselves.”
But she pointed out that it is often difficult for these established companies to “take risks and develop creative new products.”
Microsoft, which once again surpasses Apple in terms of market capitalization, has shown extraordinary business acumen by integrating AI into office products.
Nvidia is also a big winner in the AI boom – the high-priced chips needed to develop large models are being snapped up by major companies.
However, the rise of emerging AI models such as DeepSeek has brought new variables that can significantly reduce computing power costs.
Where this new technology will ultimately anchor value is still uncertain.
According to media reports, OpenAI’s revenue is expected to reach $12.7 billion this year, but the input cost is also very large, and it is not expected to achieve positive cash flow until 2029.
In other words, OpenAI’s expected revenue exceeds $125 billion to generate positive cash flow.
CoreWeave, which has tens of thousands of GPUs, has successfully gone public with a valuation of more than $4 billion, but its financial health and revenue situation suggest that providing computing power services for GenAI is either in demand or unprofitable.
Ed Zitron analyzed CoreWeave’s listing documents in detail, arguing that CoreWeave is a time bomb and a bad omen for GenAI.
CoreWeave is reportedly seeking a $1.5 billion debt deal after its IPO underperformed.
And when this time bomb explodes, can Nvidia and Microsoft, which are closely related to it, stay out of the matter?
06. The midlife crisis of the Big Seven
The AI wave is sweeping in, and tech giants are walking on thin ice.
Google’s search hegemony is shaky due to the rise of AI interaction, Apple’s hardware empire is faltering on the track of AI innovation, and Meta and Tesla’s transformation attempts have not yet borne fruit.
The disruption predicted in “The Innovator’s Dilemma” often begins with humble new players – DeepSeek’s low-cost model is quietly eroding Nvidia’s chip barriers, and OpenAI’s generative AI is reshaping the boundaries of user interaction.
