Apple’s incredible eight-week march to record highs faces a big test next month. Like many investors, we want to see the company seize the moment and continue rising. The iPhone maker’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) kicks off on June 8, offering another chance to impress Wall Street with its rather uneven execution of artificial intelligence. The event comes in a transformative year for Apple, as longtime CEO Tim Cook prepares to take over the reins in September and a major AI partnership with Alphabet Inc.’s Google begins. The question is, can Apple finally make a truly conversational Siri a reality? Melius Research’s Ben Reitzes thinks so, predicting that the new Siri will be “much better” with the help of Google and its Gemini large-scale language model. “We are seeing evidence that Siri could prove to be an agent interface that can further differentiate the Apple ecosystem and spark a level of excitement with developers not seen since the early days of the App Store,” wrote Reitzes, Melius Partner and Head of Technology Research. “In short, Apple may be on the precipice of a full-scale AI explosion.” Beyond being built into Apple’s platform, Reitzes and his team envision a world where essential apps like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash “actually integrate with Siri.” If users use apps more often and developer activity increases, that will mean more revenue for the App Store and further growth for Apple’s high-margin services business. Melius raised its price target for Apple to $385 a share from $355, implying an upside of nearly 25% from Tuesday’s closing price. Apple has been trying to significantly improve Siri with little success since announcing a partnership with OpenAI two years ago to offer ChatGPT as an option to answer more complex queries. After struggling with internal efforts to develop it further, Apple decided to change course and announced a partnership with Google to leverage Gemini in January. Jim Cramer said on CNBC Tuesday that he has noticed some gradual improvements. “I know it’s like sixth grade, but this is going to high school,” he said, adding, “By the time I get to WWDC, I’ll be a freshman.” Apple’s gains have pushed us above our club price target of $300, but we plan to reassess after WWDC. Like Melius’ Jim and Reitzes, Bank of America is bullish on the new Siri. “If AI assistants are the new gateway to search, apps, commerce, scheduling, payments, and workflow completion, we believe Apple should have significant influence over model providers, app developers, merchants, advertisers, and payment networks,” BofA analysts wrote. They raised their price target for Apple from $330 to $380. AAPL YTD Mountain Apple’s (AAPL) Year-to-date Performance But Wall Street sentiment hasn’t always been this positive regarding Apple’s AI roadmap. When the company first announced its AI suite, called Apple Intelligence, at WWDC 2024, investors found that update and subsequent updates to be more evolutionary than revolutionary. The following year at WWDC 2025, Apple once again dominated when it came to AI. Apple stock fell immediately after the incident, but ended both years higher. Even though there was no AI “craze” as Reitzes put it last year, the new iPhone 17 models had enough software and hardware improvements to be a huge success. As Apple embarks on a new chapter, the multi-year partnership with Alphabet will benefit both companies. Apple is reportedly paying Google to provide AI enhancements, including upgrades to Siri, for $1 billion. As Jim pointed out in Tuesday morning’s meeting, Google already pays Apple a lot of money to be the default search engine on its devices. Apple will also avoid spending hundreds of billions of dollars on AI infrastructure that Google has and plans to spend in the future. Gym-loving Alphabet keeps Google front and center on both iPhone and Android devices. Conclusion With less than two weeks left until WWDC 2026, Apple’s stock price rally makes it easier to maintain the stock’s “Do Not Trade on Own” designation. Jim summed it up best in his weekly column: “Apple’s quiet upward push is a great joy.” The stock has risen 25% since its March 30 Iran war low and ended Tuesday just below Friday’s all-time high close of nearly $309. The turnaround has pushed Apple stock up more than 13% year-to-date, compared to a nearly 10% rise in the S&P 500 index over the same period. (Jim Cramer’s charitable trust is long AAPL, GOOGL. See here for a complete list of stocks.) As a subscriber to Jim Cramer’s CNBC Investment Club, you will receive trade alerts before Jim makes a trade. After Jim sends a trade alert, he waits 45 minutes before buying or selling stocks in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim talks about a stock on CNBC TV, he will issue a trade alert and then wait 72 hours before executing the trade. The above investment club information is subject to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, along with our disclaimer. 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