Apple to Pay Google $1 Billion Annually for Gemini-Powered Siri

The rivalry between Apple and Google is legendary, but when it comes to the future of Artificial Intelligence, the two tech giants are choosing collaboration over combat. Reports indicate that Apple is set to pay Google approximately $1 billion annually to integrate Google’s Gemini AI models into a revamped version of Siri.

This partnership marks a significant shift in Apple’s AI strategy and could finally give Siri the brainpower it has lacked for years.

The Deal Details

According to insiders, the agreement involves Apple licensing Google’s massive 1.2 trillion-parameter Gemini model. This is a stark contrast to Apple’s own internal models, which reportedly top out around 150 billion parameters.

• Cost: ~$1 Billion / Year.
• Technology: Google Gemini (likely a custom distilled version for privacy).
• Timeline: Expected rollout in Spring 2026 (iOS 19.x or iOS 20).

This deal deepens the financial ties between the two companies. Google already pays Apple nearly $20 billion a year to remain the default search engine on Safari. Now, money is flowing in the other direction to secure top-tier AI capabilities.

Why Apple Needs Google

Apple has always prided itself on vertical integration—owning the hardware, software, and services. However, the generative AI boom caught Cupertino off guard. While Apple has been building impressive on-device models (Apple Intelligence), they lack a massive, world-knowledge model capable of complex reasoning, coding, and creative writing at the scale of GPT-4 or Gemini 1.5 Pro.

By partnering with Google, Apple solves two problems:

1. Immediate Competitiveness: Siri instantly jumps from “dumb assistant” to “state-of-the-art AI.”
2. Resource Focus: Apple can focus its internal teams on what they do best—efficient, private, on-device models—while outsourcing the heavy cloud-compute lifting to Google.

Privacy Concerns

The biggest question for Apple users is privacy. Apple has built its brand on “what happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone.” Google, conversely, is an advertising company built on data.

To bridge this gap, the integration is expected to use Apple’s Private Cloud Compute (PCC) architecture.

• Requests that can be handled on-device will stay on-device.
• Complex queries sent to Gemini will likely be anonymized and routed through Apple’s secure servers, ensuring Google never sees who is asking the question, only the question itself.

What This Means for You

For the average iPhone user, this is excellent news. Siri has long been the butt of jokes for its inability to answer simple questions or maintain context. With Gemini’s brain, Siri could become a true personal assistant—capable of planning travel itineraries, summarizing long documents, and understanding complex, multi-part commands.

The “walled garden” is getting a new gate, and it leads directly to Google’s AI lab.