In the ultimate “frenemy” move, Apple is paying Google $1 billion a year to power its new Siri. This deal will see Google’s “ultrapowerful” 1.2 trillion parameter Gemini AI become the “behind-the-scenes” engine for Apple’s flagship assistant.
This partnership is a reluctant “interim solution” for Apple, which is scrambling to fix Siri under the “Glenwood” project. Google’s AI won a “bake-off” against OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, proving it was the only one capable of the complex “planner” functions Apple needs.
The new “Linwood” Siri, set for a spring release, will be a hybrid. Apple’s 150-billion parameter models will handle simple tasks, while Google’s 1.2T model will tackle complex, multi-step requests.
This is a massive win for Google’s “AI supplier” strategy, proving its tech is so advanced that even its biggest rival has to pay for it. For Apple, it’s a necessary pill to swallow, overseen by top execs Craig Federighi and Mike Rockwell.
The entire deal hinges on privacy. Apple will host the Gemini model on its own “walled-off” Private Cloud Compute servers. This setup guarantees that Google gets its $1B check, but not a single byte of Apple user data.
