Enterprise

Apple rebuilds Siri on a custom Google Gemini model, opens iOS 27 to Claude and ChatGPT via Extensions

At Tim Cook's final WWDC keynote as CEO, Apple confirmed a roughly $1 billion-a-year Gemini licensing deal and a multi-assistant framework that lets users route queries to rival chatbots.

By Asher Glick · Enterprise software desk · 2026-06-13 · 3 min read

Photo: Unsplash / Omid Armin — An iPhone displaying the Siri voice assistant interface

Apple is rebuilding Siri on top of a custom, roughly 1.2-trillion-parameter Google Gemini model, the company confirmed at its WWDC 2026 keynote on June 9, ending roughly a year of investor pressure over a conspicuously thin AI story. Bloomberg reported the commercial terms ahead of the event: Apple will pay Google in the neighborhood of $1 billion per year to power Siri’s cloud features, while on-device inference stays on Apple Foundation Models.

It’s the largest overhaul of Siri since the assistant launched roughly 15 years ago, and the most explicit admission to date that Apple’s in-house frontier ambitions weren’t going to clear the bar on their own timeline.

The product surface is being rethought too. Per Bloomberg, the new Siri ships as a standalone app with a “Search or Ask” gesture, Dynamic Island integration, and a chatbot-style interface. TechCrunch’s keynote coverage describes a more conversational assistant compatible with visual intelligence, alongside Apple Intelligence updates spanning Safari tab management, password updating, cross-app context, Messages reply suggestions, and Mail and Messages context inside the Phone app.

The more structurally interesting move is Extensions. Apple is opening the assistant layer in iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 so users can route queries to Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini directly inside Siri. Apple has effectively conceded that the assistant slot on its devices is now a marketplace rather than a moat.

Craig Federighi delivered the privacy framing. “We believe privacy in AI is non-negotiable,” he said, adding that “data is only used to execute your request, and outside experts can continue to verify this promise at any time.” It’s the same argument Apple made when it began routing Maps queries through third-party data a decade ago, repurposed for the model era.

The keynote also doubled as a transition ceremony. Per CNN, this is Tim Cook’s last WWDC as chief executive; on September 1 he hands the role to John Ternus, Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, and moves into an executive chairman seat. Cook spent the back half of his tenure absorbing analyst questions about Apple’s AI position on earnings calls. He’s leaving with the answer outsourced, branded, and shipped.

Sources