In a high-stakes “bake-off” between the world’s top AI companies, Google has emerged victorious. Its 1.2 trillion parameter Gemini model beat OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s offerings, securing a $1 billion-a-year deal to power Apple’s new Siri.
This “interim solution” is Apple’s way of fixing its “Glenwood” project. The new “Linwood” Siri will be a hybrid system, using Google’s “ultrapowerful” AI for the “summariser” and “planner” functions that Apple’s 150-billion parameter models can’t handle.
This is a major win for Google, establishing it as an “AI supplier” even to its main rival. For Apple, it’s a reluctant admission of its AI lag, with top brass Craig Federighi and Mike Rockwell overseeing the project.
Apple’s management is still pushing its own teams to develop a 1T+ model to replace Gemini, but this “temporary” fix could last for years.
The entire deal is secured by Apple’s privacy-first architecture. The Gemini model will run on Apple’s “walled-off” Private Cloud Compute servers, not Google’s, ensuring user data is never shared.