Apple Taps Google's AI After Siri Stumbles

Finally, Apple catches pace in the AI race after a long delay. In a joint statement on Monday tech giants Apple and Google announced entering into a multi-year agreement where it said that “the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google's Gemini models and cloud technology.” ”.

The search engine’s technology will power Apple's upcoming AI features, including a smarter version of Siri due this year, which will be built on these models, it said. Apple Intelligence will continue to run on its devices and on Private Cloud Compute while maintaining its "industry-leading privacy standards."

The statement said, “After careful evaluation, Apple determined that Google's AI technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models and is excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for Apple users.”

Neither of the companies confirmed the details of the deal, but previously Apple had reportedly finalised a deal to pay Google about $1 billion annually for access to a custom version of Google’s Gemini AI model to power the next-generation Siri, according to a report by Bloomberg.

Apple’s journey to reinvent Siri hasn't gone according to plan, making this Google partnership look more like a necessary pivot than a strategic choice.

Extending The Timeline To 2026

Back at WWDC 2024, the company unveiled ambitious plans for an AI-driven assistant capable of grasping personal context and handling app controls through everyday conversation. Reality proved more challenging. By early 2025, Apple acknowledged the delays, quietly extending the timeline another year to 2026. What was supposed to be a near-term upgrade had run into technical hurdles the company couldn't quickly overcome.

That's where Google enters the picture. Rather than wait for its in-house solution to mature, Apple appears to be playing it safe with outside AI muscle to keep momentum going on the Apple Intelligence front.

This news brought a sour reaction from the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who on platform X said that the deal added to Google's already substantial influence, where it controls the mobile OS market through Android, is dominating browsing via Chrome, and now will power AI on competing platforms.

Safari's Default Search Arrangement. 

This isn't new territory for either company. Their partnership stretches back years through Safari's default search arrangement. Apple's already demonstrated comfort with third-party AI, having woven ChatGPT into its ecosystem so users can escalate tricky questions beyond Siri's capabilities.

This AI partnership arrives at a particularly sensitive juncture for Google from a regulatory standpoint. The company is currently contending with allegations that its market position stems more from strategic financial arrangements than product superiority.

Last year's federal ruling said that Google had violated antitrust law. The court zeroed in on the company's practice of paying substantial sums to secure default placement across major platforms. Documents revealed that Google transferred nearly $40 billion to Apple over a two-year period to maintain its position as Safari's default search provider.

The court's interpretation was significant. Rather than viewing these as standard commercial partnerships, characterize it as a deliberate strategy to deploy financial leverage in ways that suppress competition. The underlying issue is centered on user behavior, where the default settings powerfully influence choices, and most users never modify them. Google's payments effectively weaponized this tendency, according to the ruling, creating barriers that prevented competitors from reaching consumers on equal footing.

The implications extend directly to this new AI collaboration. As Google and Apple deepen their technical integration through artificial intelligence, observers are questioning whether similar competitive dynamics might take hold in the AI space. Unlike search, where users can relatively easily switch providers, AI capabilities are becoming deeply embedded in operating system functionality and core user experiences. If default AI positioning follows the same playbook, the competitive landscape for AI could solidify around incumbent players before alternative approaches gain meaningful market access.