Apple has made a tremendous agreement with Google that will help transform the future of its artificial intelligence capabilities.
The agreement involves Apple using Google’s Gemini technology and cloud infrastructure in powering its core AI models, including a massive Siri update slated for release this year.
This move is quite surprising, especially since Apple has always been known to retain ownership of its core technologies. In an announcement made to CNBC’s Jim Cramer, the company did an evaluation of several options before choosing Google for the AI partnership.
“After careful evaluation, we determined that Google’s technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models and we’re excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for our users,” Apple said Monday.
It said, however, that even with Google’s technology, AI models would still run on Apple devices and through its private cloud compute system.
Neither Apple nor Google would disclose the financial terms of the deal. Apple wouldn’t comment beyond the statement, and Google referred questions back to the joint announcement.
Bloomberg reported in August that the preliminary discussions between the companies included the possibility that Apple would pay roughly $1 billion a year for access to Google’s AI. Those talks centered around the use of a customized Gemini to drive a new version of Siri.
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The deal is the latest validation point in Google’s AI comeback story. Having fallen behind OpenAI early in the generative AI race, Google has steadily regained momentum.
In 2025, the search giant posted its strongest performance since 2009 and even briefly surpassed Apple in market value last week for the first time since 2019. Shares of Google rose on news of the partnership, briefly propelling the company beyond the $4 trillion market capitalization mark.
This is not the first high-stakes business partnership that Google has entered into with Apple. In fact, Google has already been paying billions of dollars annually to Apple in order for the latter to maintain its search engine on iPhones.
This profitable partnership seemed to be in jeopardy when Google was declared to have an illegal monopoly over internet search. But in a judgment in September, this did not become the worst-case outcome for Google, which would have resulted in its having to sell its browser, Chrome.
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Apple, the deal with Google helps the company respond to the mounting pressures for significant AI breakthroughs.
Apple has been observing from the sidelines as other players, such as Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft, have invested billions of dollars in AI products and infrastructure since the debut of ChatGPT towards the close of 2022.
Apple’s deferred plan to revamp the AI system of Siri from 2025 to 2026 has made this situation worse, with the company running adverts for functionalities that do not exist.
“It’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year,” Apple acknowledged at the time of the delay.
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Apple is already working with AI in partnership through the incorporation of ChatGPT by OpenAI in Siri and Apple Intelligence. The partnership tackles queries that are quite complex and need global understanding.
Apple told CNBC that it does not intend to modify the deal with OpenAI, but it is not clear how the two contracts will work hand in hand. OpenAI has not yet commented on the latest development with Google.
Meanwhile, Google presses forward with its artificial intelligence growth. It rolled out the new version of its Gemini model in the latter part of 2024, and in October of the same year, its CEO, Sundar Pichai, reported that Google’s cloud unit had secured more partner agreements worth over $1 billion in the first nine months of 2025 than in the past two years combined.
This partnership marks the onset of a pragmatic turn to acknowledge the fact that the time consumed by the company to develop its own AI capabilities would be too long in this ever-evolving market. Apple is thereby using the existing technology by Google and yet being able to control the models.
