Siri, which has been silent for many years, is about to undergo a historic upgrade. According to reliable sources, Apple has reached a major partnership with Google, paying approximately $1 billion annually to obtain exclusive rights to a customized version of Gemini large model, and plans to officially release the new Siri with iOS 26.4 in spring 2026. This move marks Apple's decisive decision to leverage external top-tier technology due to the slow progress in its own large model research, aiming to reclaim the leading position in intelligent voice interaction.

The core engine of the new Siri will be based on Gemini 2.5 Pro with 1.2 trillion parameters. Compared to the current 150 billion parameter cloud model used by Siri, it achieves a qualitative leap in key capabilities such as context understanding, multi-turn dialogue, task planning, and information summarization. The model supports an ultra-long context of 128K tokens and multimodal input, accurately parsing complex instructions such as "generate an action list based on the screenshot from last week's meeting and email it to the team," completely eliminating past user complaints of "not understanding and not answering accurately."

Why Google, rather than OpenAI or Anthropic?

Although ChatGPT and Claude have higher popularity in the consumer market, Apple's final choice of Gemini is a rational decision after multiple considerations. On one hand, compared to the potential licensing fee of 1.5 billion dollars per year with Anthropic, Google's offer is more cost-effective. On the other hand, both sides have had a decade-long cooperation foundation in areas such as search and maps, making technical integration and data compliance processes more smooth. More importantly, Gemini is consistently ranked in the first tier of authoritative large model rankings, and its mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture - which activates only part of the parameters during each inference - effectively controls computing power costs while maintaining performance, aligning with Apple's strict requirements for energy efficiency and cost.

Privacy is guaranteed: Private cloud deployment + end-cloud collaborative architecture

To alleviate user concerns about data security, Apple will deploy the Gemini model on its own private cloud servers, ensuring that Google cannot access any user interaction data. At the same time, the system uses a "edge-side + cloud" hybrid architecture: requests involving sensitive information such as personal calendar, messages, and health are still handled by Apple's small local model; only when the task complexity exceeds the device's capabilities will the cloud-based Gemini be called. This design enhances intelligence while firmly safeguarding the user's privacy.

WWDC 2026 will reveal deeper integration

The Siri upgrade in spring 2026 is just the beginning. Apple plans to further integrate Gemini capabilities into system-level functions through the next generation systems such as iOS 27 and macOS 27 at the WWDC 2026 global developers' conference in June. These functions include automatically organizing emails, cross-app data integration, and intelligent schedule optimization, building a true "personal AI agent."

Not long ago, Siri was the pioneer of intelligent voice, but it gradually fell behind in the wave of large models. Now, with the help of Gemini, Apple is trying to bring Siri back to life through a carefully designed strategy of "technology collaboration + privacy priority." This $1 billion bet not only concerns the fate of an assistant, but also determines whether Apple can maintain its ecological moat in the AI era.