Gemini-powered Siri arrived Monday morning as the centerpiece of Apple’s WWDC 2026 keynote, marking the most consequential AI pivot in the iPhone maker’s history. Tim Cook walked onto the Apple Park stage for the last time as chief executive and delivered the rebuilt assistant that millions of users had been waiting two years to see. The move signals a dramatic shift: Apple, long proud of building its own technology, now runs the brains of its most iconic product on a rival’s AI.
Background on Gemini-Powered Siri
Furthermore, the road to this moment was far from smooth. Cook first promised a context-aware, personally intelligent Siri at WWDC 2024, but the features never shipped as advertised. A class action lawsuit followed, and Apple reached a $250 million settlement in May 2026 with iPhone buyers who accused the company of false advertising. The settlement covered eligible iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 purchases made between June 10, 2024, and March 29, 2025. Monday’s reveal marks the first functional delivery of what Apple sold two years ago.
Key Details
Specifically, Apple licensed a custom 1.2-trillion-parameter Google Gemini model, reportedly at a price of roughly $1 billion per year, to serve as the backbone of Siri’s cloud intelligence. That model stands approximately eight times larger than the biggest cloud model Apple had built on its own. It uses a mixture-of-experts design that activates only a relevant subset of parameters per query, keeping response latency competitive. The new Siri routes requests through a three-tier system: simple tasks stay on-device, moderate queries go to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers, and the heaviest reasoning tasks travel to Google Cloud running on Nvidia Blackwell B200 GPUs. Apple says it anonymizes and tokenizes queries at every step so neither Apple staff nor Google can link requests to individual users.
Industry Impact of Gemini-Powered Siri
Additionally, the deal reshapes competitive dynamics across the entire AI landscape. Apple’s iOS 27 also opens Siri to third-party AI models for the first time, letting users route requests to Claude or ChatGPT instead. That multi-AI Extensions system hands Anthropic its first native iPhone foothold. Google, meanwhile, secures a $1 billion annual revenue stream and embeds Gemini into the world’s most-used premium smartphone. The arrangement arrives as Anthropic closed a $65 billion Series H round at a $965 billion valuation and confidentially filed for an IPO on June 1, intensifying the race for platform access. ChatGPT still leads global AI web traffic at 54.7%, but Google Gemini sits second at 27.4% and now powers the device in over a billion pockets.
What Comes Next
Meanwhile, the story carries significant forward momentum. iOS 27 developer betas dropped the same afternoon as the keynote, with public betas expected in mid-July and final releases arriving in September alongside the iPhone 18 lineup. The full Gemini-powered Siri feature set rolls out as a gated beta, with some capabilities releasing gradually rather than on day one. Cook transitions to executive chairman on September 1, handing the CEO role to hardware chief John Ternus. Analysts now watch whether the Gemini deal draws fresh antitrust scrutiny from the Department of Justice, which already has an active investigation touching Apple and Google’s search relationship. Colorado’s Consumer AI Protection Act also takes effect June 30, adding a legal layer to every major deployment this summer.
Conclusion
Ultimately, Monday’s WWDC keynote redrew the map of the AI assistant market in a single morning. Apple stopped building alone and placed a trillion-parameter Google model at the core of Siri, ending two years of stumbles with its most visible product. Tim Cook closes his 14-year run as CEO having finally delivered the intelligent assistant he promised. The real test, as always with Apple, comes in September — when the software ships to hundreds of millions of real devices and the world finds out if the demo holds up.
Related: Anthropic IPO Filing Shakes AI Industry
Originally reported by TechTimes. Analysis by the FastCustomAI Editorial Team.