Report: Apple Asks Google to Run Siri on Its Servers

Source: MacRumors

Overview

Apple has asked Google to investigate setting up servers in its data centers to run a future version of Siri powered by Gemini, according to The Information.

Current Apple AI Infrastructure

Apple currently sends its more complex AI queries to Private Cloud Compute, a system that runs on Apple servers using Apple silicon chips. On average, only about 10 % of Private Cloud Compute capacity is in use. Some servers intended for Apple’s AI cloud system remain in warehouses and have not yet been installed. This could change rapidly with the launch of the next‑generation Siri, which may spike Apple’s demand for cloud computing.

Cultural and Technical Challenges

• Apple has historically shown a cultural reluctance to expand its cloud infrastructure, leading to the departure of key cloud experts such as Patrick Gates, who pioneered the idea of bringing Apple chips to data centers—a concept that later formed the basis of Private Cloud Compute.
• The company continues to focus heavily on hardware devices and consumer features rather than the supporting cloud technologies, despite growth in services.
• When Apple realized it needed cloud resources for its AI efforts, its internal AI infrastructure was “beginning to decay.” The firm was decommissioning old Nvidia‑powered servers, and financial pressure pushed it toward third‑party providers like Amazon.
• For years, Apple banned its AI engineers from using Google’s cloud due to privacy concerns. Software chief Craig Federighi repeatedly vetoed Google Cloud as an AI computing option. In 2023, Google updated its security systems to satisfy Apple’s privacy requirements, after which Apple began adopting Google’s cloud infrastructure for AI.
• Private Cloud Compute faces additional issues: it updates more slowly than other servers, and the chips used were originally designed for consumer devices, not optimized for AI workloads such as large models like Gemini.

Shift Towards Google Cloud

Apple’s recent openness to Google’s cloud services reflects a strategic move to address capacity constraints and accelerate AI development for Siri. Leveraging Google’s infrastructure could provide the scalability and performance needed for next‑generation AI features.

This article first appeared on MacRumors.com.

Tags

• Apple Intelligence
• Artificial Intelligence
• Gemini
• Google
• Google Cloud Platform
• The Information