Apple said it will rely on Google to help finish its efforts to improve its virtual assistant Siri and bring additional artificial intelligence features to the iPhone and other products, according to a joint statement disclosed Monday.
The deal allows Apple to tap into Google’s AI technology, with the partnership set to use Google’s Gemini technology to customize a suite of AI features dubbed “Apple Intelligence” on the iPhone and other devices.
Apple’s move comes after years of expectations that it would make a major push into consumer AI. The company had promised its first big stake in the field with an array of new features intended to arrive on the iPhone in 2024 as part of a software upgrade, but many of those AI offerings remain in development.
The report said Google and other rivals, including Samsung, have been rolling out more AI technology on their own devices. It added that one of the most visible gaps on the iPhone has been a promised overhaul of Siri that Apple had said would transform the often-confused assistant into a more conversational and versatile multitasker.
Apple also acknowledged last year that its Siri upgrade would not happen until some point during 2026. The report noted that Google had highlighted iPhone AI shortcomings in ads promoting its Pixel phone last summer.
Framing the partnership as an advantage for Google, the report said getting Apple to endorse Google’s AI implicitly represented a coup for the company. It said Google has been steadily releasing more Gemini-based features in its search engine and Gmail, a push that has intensified competition with OpenAI and its ChatGPT chatbot, which already has a deal with Apple that makes it an option on the iPhone.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said the Apple deal was a “major validation moment for Google” in a Monday research note.
The Apple-Google arrangement was disclosed as Alphabet, Google’s parent, hit another market milestone. The report said Alphabet surpassed a market value of $4 trillion for the first time, and that its market value remained about $150 billion above Apple.
The story also connected the deal to broader investor momentum around AI companies. It said Nvidia became the first company in the $4 trillion club last July, and that Apple and Microsoft also passed $4 trillion last year but are now below that mark. It added that Nvidia briefly topped $5 trillion in late October before dipping amid worries that the hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into AI technology may be creating an investment bubble.
Finally, the report said developments in a long-running U.S. search antitrust case helped keep a separate Google-Apple search arrangement in place. It said a federal judge ordered a shake-up that investors widely interpreted as a slap on the wrist, with Alphabet’s shares rising 57% since then and adding $1.4 trillion in shareholder wealth, and that the ruling left room for the long-running alliance in search between Google and Apple. The report said Google pays Apple more than $20 billion annually to be the preferred search engine on the iPhone and other Apple products, and that the arrangement is still allowed with a few modifications under the judge’s decision.