Apple taps Google Gemini to supercharge Siri for a $1B-a-year

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Apple’s next version of Siri is getting a brain transplant, and the donor is Google. 

According to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple has struck a deal to use a custom version of Google’s Gemini AI model to power the newly upgraded Siri, and the price tag is a very casual $1 billion per year. 

Because nothing says “friendly rivalry” like quietly wiring a billion dollars to your biggest competitor so your voice assistant can finally understand what “set a reminder for tomorrow, not today” means.

The upgraded Siri will lean on a special Gemini model running on Apple’s own Private Cloud Compute servers, meaning Apple still gets to brag about privacy while borrowing someone else’s AI horsepower. 

And this isn’t a baby model, either: the report says it uses a whopping 1.2 trillion parameters, which makes Apple’s in-house 150 billion-parameter model look like a cute science fair project in comparison.

If this all feels a little rushed, that’s because it is. Apple has been playing catch-up in the AI race after delaying its new Siri features earlier this year. 

Gurman says Apple considered using OpenAI or Anthropic before ultimately landing on Google, which is like choosing a lab partner who also happens to be your biggest academic rival.

Importantly, this deal doesn’t mean Siri will suddenly turn into Google’s Gemini chatbot. This is a behind-the-scenes brain boost, separate from any future “ChatGPT-style” integrations. 

And Apple isn’t giving up on its own AI ambitions, the company reportedly still wants to ditch Google eventually and swap Gemini for homegrown tech once it stops, you know, lagging.

Apple CEO Tim Cook says the revamped Siri is coming next spring, leaving just enough time for Apple to polish, test, and probably rename everything five times. 

And while Google may be helping now, Apple is keeping the escape hatch open for more third-party AI models.

So yes, in the strangest plot twist of Big Tech 2025, Siri’s future depends (at least temporarily) on Google. The AI wars have officially entered their “we’re all frenemies now” era.