‘Project Linwood’: Apple’s New Hybrid Siri to Use Google’s Gemini

Apple’s next-generation assistant, codenamed “Linwood,” will be a hybrid system, blending in-house technology with Google’s “ultrapowerful” 1.2 trillion parameter Gemini AI. This “interim solution” is costing Apple $1 billion annually.
The move is part of the “Glenwood” project, Apple’s high-stakes effort to fix Siri. Apple’s 150-billion parameter models will handle simple tasks, but the complex “summariser” and “planner” functions will be outsourced to Google’s AI.
This decision comes after Google’s Gemini won an intense “bake-off” against models from OpenAI and Anthropic. For Apple, it’s a reluctant admission of its AI lag, but for Google, it’s a major win that establishes it as a key “AI supplier.”
The entire project is being overseen by top Apple executives Craig Federighi and Mike Rockwell, who are tasked with delivering a competitive assistant, even if it means using a rival’s engine.
The core of the deal is privacy. Apple will host the Gemini model on its own “walled-off” Private Cloud Compute servers. This critical step ensures that while Apple uses Google’s AI, it does not share any user data with Google.