Apple to Pay Google $1B a Year to Use Gemini in Siri
Apple is reportedly close to finalizing a $1 billion annual agreement with Google to integrate the Gemini AI model into Siri, according to Bloomberg. The move marks a rare collaboration between two of the world’s biggest tech rivals, driven by the urgent need to enhance Apple’s AI capabilities.
Gemini as a temporary bridge for Apple
Sources familiar with the negotiations told Bloomberg that Apple plans to adopt a specialized 1.2-trillion-parameter version of Google’s Gemini model to power an upgraded Siri experience. The integration is expected to serve as a temporary solution until Apple’s proprietary AI infrastructure matures.
Apple had evaluated offers from OpenAI and Anthropic but ultimately selected Google’s technology after internal benchmarking demonstrated superior performance, particularly in multi-turn dialogue and multimodal reasoning.
Strategic motivation
The deal represents a significant shift in Apple’s approach to artificial intelligence. While the company has historically prioritized in-house development, the pace of innovation across competitors — particularly OpenAI and Google — has accelerated faster than Apple’s internal roadmap.
Partnering with Google allows Apple to rapidly enhance Siri’s natural-language understanding, contextual awareness, and creative response generation, without delaying its product releases in 2026 and beyond.
A billion-dollar alliance
Under the proposed arrangement, Apple will pay approximately $1 billion per year for the Gemini integration. The AI will be embedded directly into Siri, Spotlight search, and selected applications across iPhone, iPad, and Mac ecosystems.
The partnership underscores the financial stakes in the ongoing AI arms race. With Gemini’s licensing deal, Google not only monetizes its vast AI infrastructure but also cements its influence inside Apple’s hardware ecosystem — an area previously dominated by internal solutions.
Industry implications
Analysts interpret the agreement as a pragmatic move for Apple, which faces mounting pressure to close the AI experience gap with Samsung, Microsoft, and OpenAI-backed competitors. While Apple’s long-term goal remains full autonomy in AI, relying on Gemini offers immediate improvements that could transform how users interact with Siri.
For Google, the collaboration is equally strategic: positioning Gemini as the de facto industry standard for enterprise-grade conversational AI. The partnership may also encourage further licensing deals with other major manufacturers seeking to embed advanced models without developing them in-house.
What comes next
The Gemini-enhanced Siri is expected to debut in late 2025, followed by iterative updates that blend Google’s AI reasoning engine with Apple’s privacy framework. Insiders suggest Apple’s internal “Ajax” model will gradually replace Gemini within two to three years once its accuracy and efficiency reach parity.
For now, Apple’s alliance with Google signals a new era of strategic realism in AI — where even the most secretive companies acknowledge that collaboration may be the only path to keep pace with innovation.
Editorial Team — CoinBotLab