Siri’s Getting a Brain Boost from… Google? The $1B Deal Explained

Yes, you read that right. Apple’s Siri is getting a massive brain boost, and it’s coming from Google. A new $1 billion-per-year deal will make Google’s 1.2 trillion parameter Gemini AI the “behind-the-scenes” engine for the assistant’s most complex tasks.

This is Apple’s “interim solution” to its AI problem. The “Glenwood” project, designed to fix Siri, found that Apple’s 150-billion parameter models couldn’t handle the “planner” and “summariser” functions needed. Google’s AI won a “bake-off” against OpenAI and Anthropic for the job.

The new “Linwood” Siri will be a hybrid. Simple commands will still be all Apple, but multi-step, complex requests will be routed to Google’s “ultrapowerful” AI.

For Google, this is a huge win, cementing its status as an “AI supplier.” For Apple, it’s a reluctant admission of lagging, with executives Craig Federighi and Mike Rockwell tasked with making the partnership work.

But what about privacy? Apple’s solution is a “walled-off” system. The Gemini model will run on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers, not Google’s. This means Google gets paid, but it never, ever sees your data.