Apple and Google announced on Jan. 12, 2026 that Gemini will power a smarter Siri under a reported $1 billion（約1600億円） annual deal. Rather than signaling Apple's weakness in AI, the agreement demonstrates Apple's leverage: it can swap AI models at will, while Google depends on Apple's default search position for access to 1.5 billion premium devices. Apple gets cutting-edge AI performance while spending far less on R&D than Alphabet.
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Sign up free →What happened
On Jan. 12, 2026, Apple and Alphabet announced a deal under which Google's Gemini AI model will power a smarter Siri. The price is rumored to be roughly $1 billion（約1600億円） a year, though neither company has confirmed the terms.
Why it matters
The deal shows Apple can improve its AI products by licensing an existing model rather than building from scratch, while keeping control over its core relationship with users—search traffic locked to Apple's devices is worth far more to Google than the Gemini licensing fee. Apple's AI capital spending in 2025 was about $12.7 billion（約2兆円）, compared with Alphabet's roughly $90 billion（約14兆円）, suggesting Apple is getting state-of-the-art AI without most of the cost of creating it.
What to watch
Internal evaluations reportedly showed Siri flubbing complex requests about a third of the time. The Gemini integration is meant to greatly improve that performance while Apple works to perfect its own in-house model.
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