New Siri: Apple Almost Chose a Different Partner Before Google Gemini

In a recent interview with the tech podcast TBPN, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman revealed that Apple was initially "going to rebuild Siri around Claude," the large language model and chatbot developed by the company Anthropic. In the end, though, Apple announced that it had decided to use Google's Gemini platform instead.

According to Gurman, Apple went with Google due at least in part to money.

"Anthropic was holding them over a barrel," said Gurman, in a podcast clip shared by TBPN. "They wanted a ton of money from them, several billion dollars a year, and at a price that doubled on an annual basis for the next three years."

Nevertheless, Gurman said Apple currently "runs on Anthropic" internally.

"Anthropic is powering a lot of the stuff Apple's doing internally in terms of product development and a lot of their internal tools," he explained. "They have custom versions of Claude running on their own servers internally, too."

Apple was "not going to use Google" for the revamped Siri until "a few months ago," he said.

Apple announced that it plans to release a more personalized version of Siri powered by Google Gemini this year. It is expected to be part of iOS 26.4, which should enter beta testing in February and be released to the general public in March or April. The new-and-improved Siri likely requires an iPhone 15 Pro or newer.

Back in June 2024, Apple said the revamped Siri will have understanding of personal context, on-screen awareness, deeper in-app controls, and more. At the time, Apple showed an iPhone user asking Siri about their mother's flight and lunch reservation plans based on info retrieved from the Mail and Messages apps.