Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has implied that Apple is too big a company to come up with the next big thing in tech.

Interviewed by Bloomberg on what are likely to be the biggest tech breakthroughs in the coming years, and which companies are likely to make them, Woz didn’t list Apple as a contender. A later comment he made underlined the fact that he doesn’t think it will be Apple …

As CNET noted, Woz appeared to be ruling out Apple on the grounds that it’s now a huge business.

Look at the companies like Google and Facebook and Apple and Microsoft that changed the world — and Tesla included. They usually came from young people. They didn’t spring out of big businesses.

Small businesses, he argued, take bigger risks – and their founders create the products they really want, without the dilution that occurs with multiple decision-makers.

He said that AI was the hottest field right now, with self-driving cars at the top of the list of things likely to have a huge impact on our lives within the next five years or so.

Given that view, it’s no surprise that Woz sees Tesla as the company most likely to succeed, despite the fact that every major car manufacturer is working on autonomous cars.

I think Tesla is on the best direction right now. They’ve put an awful lot of effort into very risky things […] I’m going to bet on Tesla.

Two major venture capitalists recently made the same suggestion, that Tesla is the closest thing to Apple during the pre-iPhone era.

You can watch the interview below.

Photo: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg

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