Chatting to 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.

Woz appeared to be ruling out Apple because it’s too big to come up with new tech.

If you 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, he said.

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

He thought 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.

On that basis Tesla is the company most likely to succeed, even though 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,” he said.

He is not the only one. Already two major venture capitalists have suggested that Tesla is the closest thing to Apple during the pre-iPhone era.

The Tame Apple press of course does not think that Woz was saying anything bad. After all a technology company does not have to invent anything to be super, cool and great.