Google’s parent company, Alphabet, saw its market cap surpass the $4T mark for the first time as the tech giant signed a long-term partnership agreement with Apple to power its AI services, including the popular Siri assistant with Gemini AI.
Apple’s upcoming Siri upgrade, expected later this year, will be powered by Google’s Gemini AI and cloud tech capabilities, which will also serve as a basis for future Apple foundational models.
According to a joint statement, the two tech giants have inked a multi-year deal to leverage Gemini’s potential for upgrading Apple Intelligence that runs exclusively on Apple devices and Private Cloud Compute. Siri, Apple’s proprietary virtual assistant, is reportedly getting more personalized later this year, powered by Google’s tech as well.
The announcement was brief and factual, without revealing too many cooperation details or descriptions of the upcoming AI update. As suggested by Bloomberg last year, Apple would pay about $1 billion a year to utilize Google AI. However, this information remains unconfirmed at present.
Upon the announcement, Google shares surged, allowing the company’s market cap to briefly reach the incredible $4 trillion mark for the first time. Across the whole tech and wider corporate landscape, only three other companies in the world have shared that milestone: Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia. One must note, though, that the market excitement was brief and Alphabet’s stock has quickly pulled back below the desired threshold.
Nevertheless, Google remains one of the top beneficiaries of the investor craze over AI technologies. Just a few months ago, the tech behemoth rolled out its Gemini 3 AI model. Being integrated directly into Google Search and the Gemini app, the new model boasts an improved ability to handle different types of information (e.g. text, images, audio, and video) together, at the same time, and in a single context.
Besides common AI assistant features, Google is actively working on an open and standardized agentic payments framework. Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) establishes common rules for how AI agents initiate, authorize, and complete transactions on behalf of users, emphasizing transparency, compliance, and user protection.
