Apple to Pay Google $1 Billion to Make Siri Smarter, Says Report

Apple is finalizing a deal with Google to use its powerful Gemini large language model (LLM) to help power a major overhaul of Siri, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The arrangement, which could see Apple paying roughly $1 billion USD ($1.41 billion CAD) annually, would represent one of the company’s most significant AI partnerships to date.

The revamped Siri experience, internally codenamed “Linwood,” is set to debut with iOS 26.4 next spring. Apple plans to leverage Google’s 1.2 trillion-parameter Gemini model to handle Siri’s summarization and planning functions — the parts of the assistant responsible for understanding complex tasks and generating responses. That’s a major leap from the 150 billion-parameter model currently used for Apple Intelligence’s cloud-based processing.

The collaboration, known internally as “Glenwood,” is being led by Vision Pro creator Mike Rockwell and software chief Craig Federighi. Apple reportedly tested multiple third-party AI systems, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, before ultimately selecting Gemini earlier this year.

Under the deal, Google’s model will run on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers, keeping user data fully isolated from Google’s infrastructure. Despite the size of the partnership, Apple is unlikely to promote it publicly and will instead treat Google as a behind-the-scenes technology supplier.

This move comes after reports of Apple entering talks with Google over a potential Gemini integration surfaced in August. The company has been seeking outside help as it continues to lose key AI executives, including the head of its models team, Ruoming Pang, longtime AI lead Robby Walker, and Ke Yang, who led the tech giant’s efforts to build an AI-powered web search engine.

Apple’s AI revamp, slated to begin rolling out in 2026, will include a new chatbot codenamed “Veritas,” a generative search tool known internally as “World Knowledge Answers,” and new capabilities that could allow Siri to fully control apps with voice commands.

While Apple intends to eventually replace Gemini with its own models — the company is reportedly developing a 1 trillion-parameter AI system to rival Google’s technology — its decision to temporarily rely on Gemini underscores how far Apple still has to go in catching up with AI leaders.

Apple continues to expand its AI development globally, including efforts to launch Apple Intelligence and the new Siri in China. However, because Google services are banned there, the Chinese version will use Apple’s own models with additional moderation layers built by Alibaba and potentially Baidu.