The race for artificial intelligence is forcing Apple to make decisions that not long ago seemed unthinkable. The most relevant of them has just gone public: a company from Cupertino signed a multi-year agreement with Google to use Gemini models and their cloud technologies as the basis of the next generation of Apple Intelligence. A strategic move aimed at a very specific goal: to save and remake Siri at a critical moment.
Over the years, Siri has been one of the great symbols of the Apple ecosystem, but also one of its most questionable moments. In the context in which assistants such as ChatGPT or Perplexity have raised the bar for conversational interaction, Apple’s assistant has begun to show its limitations. It doesn’t always understand what’s being asked of it, it gets lost when the request goes beyond simple templates, and above all, it doesn’t fulfill the promises that Apple itself has sown around its evolution.
The deal with Google comes after months of delays, calendar adjustments and internal tensions. As confirmed by the company, Gemini will now support so-called Apple Foundation models, on which new Apple Intelligence features will be built.. Among them is a more personalized Siri, whose arrival is again “this year”, renewing a promise that has been delayed several times.
Apple, however, was keen to emphasize that privacy remains a non-negotiable pillar. Although the technology base is changing, the system will continue to run on devices and on its Private Cloud Compute platform, maintaining – according to the company – its data protection standards. The message is clear: the operational heart of Apple Intelligence does not leave the home.
The starting point
To understand how this happened, you have to go back to WWDC 2024. There, Apple introduced Apple Intelligence as a great answer to the rise of generative artificial intelligence and put Siri at the center of the strategy. He promised an assistant capable of understanding the user’s personal context, “seeing” what’s happening on the screen and connecting actions between apps.. The ambitions were huge: to interpret emails, messages, meetings or files and act on them without forcing the user to switch from one application to another.
However, it was a long way from promises to reality. At the end of 2024, Apple was still publicly defending its roadmap and reiterated that Siri’s most advanced features will arrive “in the coming months”while running other parts of Apple Intelligence, such as Image Playground or Genmoji. Three months later, in March 2025, the discourse changed. In an official statement, the company acknowledged that some features will take longer and talked about a more personalized Siri coming “over the next year.”
WWDC in 2025 confirmed the suspicions. Siri did not show the qualitative leap that many expected, and Apple was forced to provide an explanation. Craig Federighi, head of software, acknowledged that the first version of the new Siri was planned for late 2024 to spring 2025, but was shelved because it didn’t meet internal standards or user expectations.
Management changes
There is no blockage left on the product. This also affected the organizational chart. In March 2025, Apple decided to remove Siri from John Gianandrea’s domain and put it under Mike Rockwell, reporting directly to Federighi. A few months later, the company confirmed that Gianandrea would step down from his role, spend time as an advisor and retire in the spring of 2026, with Omar Subramanya becoming the new VP of AI.
Now, with Gemini as its new technical base, Apple is on the move again. The alliance with Google does not guarantee success, but it means a major change in its strategy. In the end, it all comes down to the ultimate test: real-world use. When users start asking complex things from their iPhones or Macs, it will be clear whether Apple has caught up in the technological race that does not allow interruptions or second chances.
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