Apple Reportedly Enlisting Google Gemini to Supercharge Siri
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It looks like Google has won the “bake-off” that Apple held to choose a third-party AI model to power its Siri improvements.
In August, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that Apple had been entertaining suitors for a possible partnership to get the more personalized Siri it’s been promising back on track. At the time, Apple was still developing two versions of Siri in parallel: Linwood was Apple’s in-house attempt to rebuild Siri into a true conversational assistant, while Glenwood represented the third-party path.
While several AI powerhouses had reportedly courted Apple, by late August it was down to two contenders: Anthropic and Google. While Apple was impressed with Anthropic, the financial terms reportedly gave it pause.
Now, it sounds like that hesitation has turned into an outright rejection. In this week’s Power On newsletter, Gurman reports that, while Apple determined that Anthropic had a better model, Google “made more sense financially.” It likely helps that the two companies have had a multi-billion-dollar partnership for over a decade that has long kept Google as the default search engine on Apple’s devices.
Leveraging Google’s Gemini will likely help Apple overcome the negative inertia it’s been experiencing with its own in-house AI models, but there’s no guarantee it will lead to a slam dunk. As Gurman notes, it could turn out to be too little, too late.
Apple is betting heavily on the new Siri, which will lean on Google’s Gemini model and introduce features like AI-powered web search. But there’s no guarantee users will embrace it.
Mark Gurman
Until recently, a third-party partnership remained a “Plan B,” but if Gurman’s latest info is correct, it seems like Apple has given up on its in-house plans and is now solidly on that alternate path. If this is true, Apple’s next Siri won’t just be smarter — it will mark a sea change in how Apple approaches AI.
Siri + Gemini: What It Really Means
As we noted in August, this doesn’t mean Apple plans to replace Siri with Gemini Live, or even swap out Siri’s smarts with Gemini’s in a sort of digital brain transplant.
Instead, the arrangement is for Google to develop a custom AI model that will serve as the foundation for Siri. It will still be based on Gemini, but it won’t be Gemini. Apple and Google have reportedly been discussing a separate deal to integrate the real Gemini as an extension to Apple Intelligence, in much the same way that ChatGPT currently works, but that’s an entirely separate thing.
The Google-developed AI powering Siri 2.0 would almost certainly be run by Apple on its extremely private and secure Private Cloud Compute (PCC) infrastructure, but it also likely means the more powerful Siri won’t run on-device. Siri requests would need to be processed by Apple’s PCC servers in the cloud, the same way things worked before Apple gave us on-device Siri processing in iOS 15.
It’s also likely to be a very quiet, behind-the-scenes arrangement, which also means you can rest assured that Apple won’t be letting Google get its fingers into your iPhone.
I don’t expect either company to ever discuss this partnership publicly, and you shouldn’t expect this to mean Siri will be flooded with Google services or Gemini features already found on Android devices. It just means Siri will be powered by a model that can actually provide the AI features that users expect — all with an Apple user interface.
Mark Gurman
Chasing a Moving Target
As part of last week’s Q4 2025 earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook reassured investors that Siri is still on track. However, he was also his typically opaque self when it came to specifics, saying only that Apple’s “intention is to integrate with more people over time.”
The biggest challenge Apple faces is that OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and the rest aren’t sitting still. At this point, Apple Intelligence and Siri’s in-house LLMs are likely too far behind for the company to skate to where the puck is going to be in early 2026 — and it knows it.
In September, reports surfaced that Apple had developed an internal chatbot app, codenamed “Veritas,” to test Siri’s language models. Veritas — Latin for “truth” — reflects Apple’s lofty goal of finally making Siri reliable, but it also shows Apple won’t settle for anything less than perfection.
After all, Siri has a pretty bad reputation to live down, and it’s only gotten worse since Apple added ChatGPT into the mix. At this point, Apple’s in-house Siri LLMs can’t get away with merely being good. This is Apple’s AI comeback, and it needs to hit a home run. If that means calling in a power hitter like Google, that’s exactly what it needs to do.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
