Historic agreement between Apple and Google: iPhone AI will become Gemini
Cupertino turns to the search engine to relaunch its assistant after months of delays.
The race for artificial intelligence is forcing Apple to make decisions that, until recently, would have seemed unthinkable. The most significant one has just been made public: the Cupertino-based company has signed a multi-year agreement with Google to rely on Gemini models and its cloud technology as the basis for the next generation of Apple Intelligence. This strategic move has a very specific goal: to rescue and reinvent Siri at a critical moment.
For years, Siri has been one of the great symbols of the Apple ecosystem, but also one of its most questioned points. In a context where assistants such as ChatGPT and Perplexity have raised the bar for conversational interaction, Apple’s assistant has begun to show its limitations. It does not always understand what is asked of it, it gets lost when the request deviates from simple patterns, and, above all, it has fallen short of the promises that Apple itself made about its evolution.
The agreement with Google comes after months of delays, schedule adjustments, and internal tensions. According to the company, the so-called Apple Foundation Models will now be based on Gemini, on which the new Apple Intelligence features will be built. These include a more personalized Siri, which is once again set to arrive “this year,” reviving a promise that has been postponed several times.
Apple, however, has emphasized that privacy remains a non-negotiable pillar. Even if the technological basis changes, the system will continue to run on devices and on its Private Cloud Compute platform, maintaining—according to the company—its data protection standards. The message is clear: the operational heart of Apple Intelligence is not leaving home.
Starting point
To understand how we got here, we need to go back to WWDC 2024. There, Apple presented Apple Intelligence as its big response to the rise of generative AI and placed Siri at the center of its strategy. It promised an assistant capable of understanding the user’s personal context, “seeing” what was happening on the screen, and linking actions between applications. The ambition was enormous: to interpret emails, messages, appointments, or files and act on them without forcing the user to navigate from one app to another.
However, there was a long way to go from promises to reality. At the end of 2024, Apple continued to publicly defend its roadmap and reiterated that Siri’s most advanced capabilities would arrive “in the coming months,” while launching other Apple Intelligence features such as Image Playground and Genmoji. Three months later, in March 2025, the discourse changed. In an official statement, the company admitted that some features would need more time and went on to talk about a more personalized Siri that would arrive “over the next year.”
The 2025 WWDC confirmed the doubts. Siri did not show the qualitative leap that many expected, and Apple was forced to provide explanations. Craig Federighi, head of software, acknowledged that there was a first version of the new Siri planned for release between late 2024 and spring 2025, but that it was shelved because it did not meet internal standards or user expectations.
Leadership changes
The blockage did not stop at the product. It also had consequences for the organizational chart. In March 2025, Apple decided to remove Siri from John Giannandrea’s area and place it under the leadership of Mike Rockwell, reporting directly to Federighi. Months later, the company confirmed that Giannandrea would be stepping down from his position, spending some time as an advisor, and retiring in the spring of 2026, with Amar Subramanya as the new vice president of AI.
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Now, with Gemini as its new technical foundation, Apple is making another move. The alliance with Google does not guarantee success, but it does mark a profound shift in its strategy. In the end, it will all come down to the ultimate test: real-world use. It will be when users start asking complex things of their iPhones or Macs that we will know whether Apple has managed to catch up in a technological race that allows for no breaks or second chances.
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