Apple is reportedly preparing to pay Alphabet around $1 billion per year to license Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence technology for Siri, according to new details from Bloomberg. The partnership will see Google’s 1.2 trillion-parameter Gemini model support core features within Apple’s voice assistant, marking one of the company’s largest external technology deals in recent years.
The integration focuses on two major Siri upgrades—its summarizer and planner functions. These features are designed to help Siri synthesize information, manage complex requests, and perform multi-step tasks more intelligently than before. While Gemini will handle key parts of Siri’s reasoning engine, Apple plans to present it entirely as an in-house experience. Users won’t see any visible signs of Google branding, and the AI processing will take place on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers rather than Google’s infrastructure.
The custom Gemini system being deployed for Apple represents a major leap in scale and sophistication. It’s significantly larger than the 150 billion-parameter model currently powering Apple’s own cloud-based “Apple Intelligence” system, and could help close the gap between Siri and leading AI assistants such as ChatGPT or Gemini itself.
The revamped assistant—code-named Linwood—is expected to debut in iOS 26.4 next spring. Internally, the initiative to rebuild Siri with third-party AI models is referred to as Glenwood. Apple reportedly views this partnership as a temporary solution while it works on its own large-scale AI model. The company’s in-house project, a roughly 1 trillion-parameter system under development, is aimed at powering future Apple Intelligence services without external reliance.
The deal underscores Apple’s acknowledgment that it has fallen behind in large-language-model development. While Apple has invested heavily in on-device machine learning, it has trailed rivals like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI in developing advanced generative systems capable of reasoning and creative output. Partnering with Google allows Apple to deploy an immediate upgrade to Siri without waiting for its own model to mature.
The collaboration, however, comes with geographical limitations. Due to China’s restrictions on Google services, the Gemini-powered Siri will not launch in the Chinese market. Instead, Apple plans to rely on a combination of its own AI models and localized technologies from Chinese companies. Alibaba is said to be providing a filtering layer, while Baidu may partner with Apple for broader AI functionality in the region.
The $1 billion-per-year licensing arrangement highlights how AI is reshaping relationships between major tech rivals. Despite competing fiercely in mobile ecosystems—iOS versus Android—Apple and Google continue to find business overlap in critical infrastructure and search agreements. With Siri’s AI transformation underway, Apple’s short-term dependence on Google’s Gemini could mark a pivotal stage in redefining the assistant’s capabilities for the next era of intelligent computing.
