Apple plans to demonstrate its long-delayed new version of Siri in the second half of February, with a beta of iOS 26.4 expected in early February, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported on January 25. The features are the ones Apple first announced at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2024 and has yet to ship, nearly two years later.
The new assistant is built on Google’s Gemini models rather than Apple’s own, following a multiyear partnership the two companies announced on January 12. In that statement the companies said Google’s technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple’s models. Bloomberg has reported the deal is worth about $1 billion a year to Google, and some analysts expect its total value to grow to several billion dollars over time.
A much larger model, running on Apple’s servers
According to Bloomberg, the Gemini-based system is referred to internally as Apple Foundation Models version 10 and has roughly 1.2 trillion parameters, a large increase on the 150 billion parameter models Apple currently uses for its cloud-based features. The model will run on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers rather than Google’s infrastructure.
Apple has said that although Gemini technology is involved, user data is processed within Private Cloud Compute and is not accessible to Google. The arrangement lets Apple keep its privacy pitch while using a partner’s model to close the capability gap that has left Siri behind rivals.
What changes in iOS 26.4
When iOS 26.4 ships to the public, Bloomberg reports, Siri will gain the three headline abilities Apple promised in 2024:
- On-screen awareness, so the assistant can understand and act on what is displayed.
- Personal context drawn from emails, messages and other apps, allowing it to answer questions using the user’s own information.
- The ability to carry out multistep tasks inside third-party apps through App Intents.
The update is described as the first stage of a broader strategy. Bloomberg says Apple is also working on a more advanced, chatbot-style version of Siri for iOS 27 in the fall, intended to compete directly with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini app. The same newsletter reported management changes in Apple’s AI group and plans for AI features in Safari.
The decision to rely on Google is widely read as a practical acknowledgment by Apple that improving Siri could not wait for its in-house models to catch up. The company’s original Siri overhaul, announced in 2024, was delayed in 2025 after internal testing found the features did not work reliably, prompting a reorganization of the team responsible.
