When Tim Cook walks onstage Monday at 10 a.m. Pacific for his last WWDC keynote as CEO, he’ll introduce a Siri that Apple no longer builds the brains for. The rebuilt assistant headlining iOS 27, iPadOS 27 and macOS 27 will run on a custom 1.2-trillion-parameter model derived from Google’s Gemini architecture, licensed for roughly $1 billion per year and shipping inside Apple’s Private Cloud Compute stack under the internal designation “Apple Foundation Models v10.”
Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management pegs the multi-year arrangement at up to $5 billion. Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian confirmed the broad shape of the deal at Google Cloud Next ‘26. The licensed model is roughly eight times larger than Apple’s largest in-house cloud model, a gap that explains the check Apple is writing and the strategic concession behind it.
The concession arrives almost two years late. Apple first promised an AI-rebuilt Siri at WWDC 2024, then marketed those features at the iPhone 16 launch in September 2024, then watched the rollout slip. In May, Apple settled a false-advertising suit with iPhone buyers for $250 million, with base claims of $25 per eligible device and up to $95 if total claim volume stays low, covering purchases between June 10, 2024 and March 29, 2025.
That sequence, promise, ship the hardware, miss, settle, license from a competitor, is the actual news. Apple’s preferred posture is vertical integration on Apple Silicon servers. The Gemini deal concedes that on the frontier-model axis, the company couldn’t catch up in time and chose rent over delay.
The keynote will also introduce a standalone chat app across all three operating systems, with iCloud history sync, and a multi-provider AI panel exposing ChatGPT, Gemini and others alongside Siri, extending the OpenAI handoff already present in iOS 26. Independent security researchers will get fresh material to audit. Older hardware loses out: the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max retain Apple Intelligence, while several earlier models are cut.
Mark Gurman of Bloomberg has framed the broader release as Apple’s Snow Leopard moment, an echo of the 2009 macOS cleanup that prioritized refinement over features. The framing is generous. Snow Leopard was a confident pause by a company at the top of its platform. This is a cleanup forced by a missed roadmap, paid for with a billion-dollar annual license to the search rival Apple has spent a decade trying not to depend on.
Cook steps down September 1, having announced the transition on April 20. The Siri he leaves his successor is, for now, Google’s.
Sources
- https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/06/what-to-expect-from-wwdc-2026-siris-highly-anticipated-revamp-and-apple-intelligence-updates/
- https://gizmodo.com/what-were-expecting-at-apple-wwdc-2026-2000768245
- https://www.macrumors.com/guide/wwdc-2026-what-to-expect/
- https://www.techtimes.com/articles/317902/20260606/wwdc-2026-opens-monday-gemini-powers-rebuilt-siri-iphone-11-faces-ios-27-cut.htm
- https://www.tomsguide.com/news/live/wwdc-2026-live-news-updates