07/11/2025
The dinner pals are at it again.
Apple and Google are nearing a multi-billion deal that will see the two tech giants build a custom Gemini AI model to power Siri within the next year, Bloomberg reported this afternoon.
After Apple explored other third-party options to beef up Siri, including OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude, the company settled on Gemini following a test of the Google tech.
As it stands, the future Gemini system would "dwarf" Apple's current AI in terms of ability, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. The Google model would use 1.2 trillion parameters (a measure of how LLMs process and respond to queries) compared to Apple's current cloud-based Apple Intelligence model, which uses a paltry 150 billion.
Under the arrangement, Apple will pay Google $1 billion annually to use the company's tech, with Gemini primarily powering Siri's summary and multi-step planning functions. Some Siri features will still utilize Apple's own in-house models.
For Apple, it's another major acknowledgement that it remains far behind in the AI race. But while the deal with Google will certainly help it deliver on some long-promised Siri features, the company doesn't view Gemini as a long-term solution. It hopes to eventually replace Google with its own in-house models after further development.
