Apple Hands Siri to Google

Joint statement from Google and Apple

Apple and Google have entered into a multi-year collaboration under which the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google's Gemini models and cloud technology. These models will help power future Apple Intelligence features, including a more personalized Siri coming this year.

Thankfully Apple is finally picking a lane. They're officially outsourcing Siri's AI to a major competitor, which suggests they're behind on AI and aren't interested in catching up themselves. This doesn't look like Apple buying time to build their own competitive models. A multi-year commitment to have Google's tech power the next generation of Apple Foundation Models feels pretty permanent.

It's massive validation for Google's Gemini rise over the past year or so. Having Apple publicly state that your AI is the best foundation for their models is about as strong an endorsement as you can get in this space. Google isn't just the search and ads company competing with Apple's ecosystem anymore. They're the AI infrastructure provider that Apple depends on. That shifts the power dynamic between these companies in ways that won't be obvious for a while yet.

The awkward bit is the OpenAI arrangement. Apple partnered with them publicly not that long ago, positioning ChatGPT integration as part of their AI strategy. Now their biggest rival is powering Siri's brain instead. That makes the OpenAI deal look like a stopgap measure while Apple figured out who to actually partner with long-term. You can bet Sam Altman isn't thrilled watching Google land the foundational contract after OpenAI got the initial publicity partnership.

What's unclear is what "next generation of Apple Foundation Models" actually means in practice. We don't know what Siri will look like when this ships, or how deeply integrated Gemini will be into the rest of iOS. The current ChatGPT integration is clunky and slow, but that might just be the nature of bolting on third-party AI rather than building it in from the start. If Apple learned anything from that experience, hopefully they'll do better with Google's tech.

This feels like Apple admitting they can't compete in AI infrastructure, which is a shift from how they've historically operated. They usually build the core technology themselves, even if it takes longer. Handing that over to Google suggests the gap was too wide and the timeline too urgent. Whether that's the right call depends entirely on what they ship, which we won't know until WWDC in June.