June 10, 2026. At its WWDC 2026 keynote on June 8, Apple made the AI pivot it had been resisting: instead of relying only on its own models, it is renting the best ones and opening the iPhone to rivals. For any business building on AI, it is a loud confirmation that the future is multi model, not one vendor.
What Apple announced
- Siri now runs on Google Gemini. The rebuilt Siri is powered by a custom 1.2 trillion parameter variant of Google's Gemini, reportedly licensed for around 1 billion dollars a year. It ships as a standalone app for the first time across iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27.
- Third party AI becomes the engine. A new AI Extensions framework lets outside providers, including OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Anthropic's Claude, serve as the intelligence layer behind Apple Intelligence features. It is the first time Apple has let users pick a competitor's model to power the assistant on their device.
- Tim Cook said goodbye. It was Cook's final WWDC keynote as CEO. He confirmed he will step down on September 1, 2026, handing the role to hardware chief John Ternus.
What it means for operators
When the most controlling company in tech ships a model agnostic phone, the lesson for everyone else is clear: do not hard wire your business to a single AI vendor. The teams that win build automations and assistants that can swap between Claude, GPT, and Gemini as price, speed, and quality shift, rather than rewriting everything each time a new leader emerges. With Claude and ChatGPT now a tap away for hundreds of millions of iPhone users, customer expectations for instant, conversational answers will only climb, and the businesses that meet them with their own well built assistants will pull ahead.
That is the work we do every day. Our team builds AI automation and assistants designed to be model agnostic from day one, and if you want senior help wiring the latest models into your product or operations, you can hire an AI engineer from us.
Frequently Asked Questions
Apple unveiled a rebuilt Siri powered by a custom Google Gemini model, a new AI Extensions framework that lets ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude power Apple Intelligence features, and updates across iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27. The keynote on June 8 was also Tim Cook's last as CEO.
Yes. Apple confirmed the new Siri runs on a custom 1.2 trillion parameter variant of Google's Gemini, reportedly licensed for about 1 billion dollars per year, and ships as a standalone app across Apple's operating systems.
Apple's new AI Extensions framework lets third party models, including Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's ChatGPT, serve as the intelligence layer for Apple Intelligence. It is the first time Apple has allowed a competitor's model to power the on device assistant experience.
It validates a model agnostic strategy. Rather than locking into one AI provider, businesses should build automations and assistants that can switch between Claude, GPT, and Gemini based on cost, speed, and quality, so they are never stranded when the best model changes.