Apple’s upcoming “Linwood” release of Siri, set for the spring, will be a hybrid AI system. It will blend Apple’s 150-billion parameter models with Google’s “ultrapowerful” 1.2 trillion parameter Gemini AI, which Apple is licensing for $1 billion a year.
This “interim solution” is the result of Apple’s “Glenwood” project, the internal effort to fix Siri. Google’s AI will handle the most complex “summariser” and “planner” functions, enabling Siri to execute multi-step tasks.
Google’s Gemini was chosen after a “bake-off” where it beat OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s models. This is a reluctant admission of Apple’s AI lag, but a necessary step to make Siri competitive.
Top executives Craig Federighi and Mike Rockwell are overseeing the project. While Apple is pushing its teams to build a 1T+ model to replace Gemini, this “temporary” fix could last for years.
The partnership is made possible by Apple’s strict privacy controls. The Gemini model will be hosted on Apple’s “walled-off” Private Cloud Compute servers, guaranteeing Google gets its money but no access to user data.
