Bloomberg reports that Apple has recently scaled back its plans for the Project Mulberry initiative following a leadership shakeup at the company’s health organization. Here are the details.
Last year, Bloomberg reported that Apple was looking into Project Mulberry, an initiative that would bring an AI-powered health coach to a revamped Health app.
According to the original report, this AI agent was being trained on data from Apple-hired physicians, and would rely on sleep experts, nutritionists, physical therapists, mental health experts, and cardiologists to create educational video content for the Health app.
Apple had reportedly built a studio in Oakland, California, to produce this content, which Bloomberg notes “will be repurposed and introduced as early as this year.”
From my 9to5Mac’s coverage of Project Mulberry:
These videos will play to help explain concerning health trends to users, and will be recorded in a new facility in Oakland, California, according to Gurman. Apple also wants to find a ‘major doctor personality’ to serve as a ‘host’ for the new service. Some inside of Apple are calling this service ‘Health+.’
Since then, the project (which was reportedly slated to be introduced alongside iOS 26) saw multiple timeline shifts, as Apple’s own health and AI divisions underwent multiple organizational changes.
On the health side, longtime COO Jeff Williams retired, and oversight of the health and fitness teams was shifted to services chief Eddy Cue.
Meanwhile, on the AI side, Apple’s senior vice president of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, John Giannandrea, announced he will step down and retire in spring 2026, with much of his organization being folded into the broader software engineering group overseen by Craig Federighi.
Fast-forward to today, Bloomberg reports that Eddy Cue wasn’t convinced that the company’s plans for a new health service were compelling enough against what is currently available from competing companies:
Cue has told colleagues that Apple needs to move faster and be more competitive in health, the people said. He added that newer rivals — including Oura Health Oy and Whoop Inc. — offer more compelling and useful features, particularly through their iPhone apps.
The longtime Apple executive didn’t think that the company’s existing plan for a new health service met that bar. He’s also considering changes to Apple Fitness+, a $9.99-per-month competitor to Peloton Interactive Inc.’s app that offers guided workouts.
Bloomberg also notes that despite the change of plans for Project Mulberry, Apple is still looking to roll out some of its planned features individually over time within the Health app (including one that would use the iPhone’s camera to analyze how a person walks):
As part of other health efforts, Apple is working on an AI chatbot that would allow users to ask questions about their well-being. It draws on an internal system known as World Knowledge Answers — technology that’s designed to rival Google’s Gemini-powered search results and apps like Perplexity.
Finally, Bloomberg notes that with iOS 27, Apple plans on allowing the revamped Siri “to support more advanced health-related queries across the Health app and its operating systems.”
To read Bloomberg’s full report, follow this link.
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