How big is the local LLM market? I have trouble imagining Apple will move enough units to make $20k/ea worth it for them as a business segment.

They have been sold out of a lot of units, due to people developing AI, so apparently, it is significant.

I think the bet is that it will get bigger, both at the consumer level, and with orgs eventually discovering ready-made solutions for having their own on-prem inference.

100,000 units a year would be $2 billion annually.

And usually, most of a company's revenue comes from the heaviest spenders.

So figure there are some out there who will by tens of these because they have some "idea to change the world". (Whether true or not.) Some startups, etc.

I'd wager, across planet earth right now, it should be trivial to push 100,000 units per year. Probably closer to 500,000 units per year. So that's an easy $10 billion a year.

$2-10 billion is meaningful for any company. Even one as large is Apple.

Especially if it's a first step towards a stronger foothold in the AI inference space.

They can then expand down market to grow the pie further.

For example, with truly dedicated inference boxes.

And given the demand for $7,000 Sparks and sold out $5,000 GPUs, the market for these $20,000 machines is likely much higher than my 100,000 unit lower bound. (Earth is a big place. It doesn't take much excitement to generate massive sales in a space with currently insatiable demand.)