2026-09-22 — OpenAI tells a court its ChatGPT-in-Siri deal underperformed, and that Apple refused exclusivity

• OpenAI told a federal court that Apple’s ChatGPT integration was “persistently underperforming” and that Apple refused the two-year exclusivity OpenAI first asked for, in a summary-judgment brief filed 09-22 in Musk’s companies’ antitrust suit. The brief (heavily redacted) says the integration was “dramatically underperforming” by the time the suit was filed and that OpenAI raised the problem with Apple on 2026-03-25; on the Google side it cites only the 2026-01-12 joint announcement that Apple’s next Foundation Models would be “based on Google’s Gemini models and cloud technology”, so the brief itself does not explain why Apple chose Gemini. Apple’s non-exclusivity, and its stated plan to integrate one provider and then add others, is the contractual background to the Gemini deal. (Court filing, Doc. 403, MacRumors)

2026-09-15 — Hidden iOS 27 code shows Apple built Siri to let a third-party model replace its own backend entirely

• MacRumors found hidden iOS 27 code showing Apple built Siri with a Model Delegation API and an Inference Provider protocol that would let Claude or GPT-5.6 replace Apple’s own model as the backend — neither switched on for users yet. This is a materially bigger watch-question answer than the Gemini deal alone: rather than a single locked-in partner, Apple appears to be building Siri as model-agnostic infrastructure, with Gemini (below) as the current default rather than the architecture’s ceiling. TLDR AI’s 09-15 issue led its news block with this alongside two unrelated items (Anthropic’s “Claude Money” personal-finance feature in development, OpenAI’s ~$300M acquisition of camera startup Glass Imaging) that this map has no existing thread for — noted here for provenance, not filed to this thread. (MacRumors, TLDR AI)

2026-09-14 — The Gemini-powered Siri rebuild actually ships

• the rebuilt, Gemini-powered Siri shipped publicly with iOS 27 on 2026-09-14, as the 09-11 entry below said it would. The Neuron and other AI newsletters covered the ship substantively. Confirms this thread’s central watch question in the affirmative for now: the public product runs on Google’s model, not a delayed Apple-only fallback. (The Neuron, 09-14 issue — primary Apple newsroom confirmation not yet independently re-verified)

2026-09-11 — Siri’s AI beta will ship 09-14 with daily usage caps and a future paid tier

• ⚠️ Apple’s Siri AI beta ships with iOS/OS 27 on 2026-09-14 carrying daily usage caps and a future paid tier, per TLDR AI’s 09-10 newsletter issue. This speaks directly to this thread’s own watch question — how Apple rations a model it does not fully control — and is new information the thread’s notes (which stop at a 07-27 crawl) don’t yet have. Single-sourced to a newsletter aggregator rather than an Apple statement; carried as a thread update, not an established fact from Apple itself. (TLDR AI)

2026-09-09 — Siri AI ships publicly, still gated to a waitlist and still blocked in the EU and China

• Siri AI shipped 2026-09-09, English-only and gated by a waitlist, with Apple reconfirming at actual ship time that it remains blocked in the EU and China with no launch timeline given for either — the thread’s own EU/DMA watch item, now answered at shipping time rather than at announcement time: still unresolved. The ~$1B/yr Google deal figure remains unconfirmed by either company. (TechTimes, 2026-09-02)

2026-06 (WWDC) — Thread opened

• Apple unveiled Siri AI with Apple Intelligence Gemini-powered via a Google partnership (alongside 3rd-gen Apple Foundation Models + Private Cloud Compute) — the tell that the distribution giant outsourced the model layer; central to “who controls the stack.”

← Backstory (crawl 2026-07-27 → artifacts/findings/apple-gemini-model-deal-2026-07-27.md)

2026-07-27 — the flagged “07-21/22 cloud extension” traced to a stale re-index

• The dated development reported as “Siri-Gemini cloud-services extension” (~07-21/22) does not appear to be new news — the MSN item Google News indexed on 07-22 carries a headline near-identical to a 2026-03-02 Gadget Hacks story on the same underlying report, with no independent outlet corroborating a genuinely new cloud-hosting development in the 07-20→07-22 window. Read as a syndication re-date, not a missed story — the real gap in the window was the EU launch fight (06-09, below), not this. (MSN via Google News)

2026-07-13→22 — iOS 27 public beta ships Siri AI broadly

• The Gemini-powered Siri AI reached general public-beta testers (US/non-EU) mid-July, with a second public beta 07-22 — routine product rollout, not a new deal-terms development, but confirms the shipped feature is live outside the EU. (TechCrunch · Engadget)

2026-06-09 — the EU blocks the launch; the real regulatory angle

• Apple withheld Siri AI from EU iPhones at iOS 27 launch, citing DMA compliance — EU regulators publicly rejected Apple’s exemption request (“no tech rule exemption”); ~450M EU iPhone users affected. This is the actual antitrust/regulatory development in the dark window, distinct from (and better-sourced than) the flagged “cloud extension.” (Reuters · The Verge)

2026-06-08 — WWDC ships the full architecture

• Apple’s own newsroom confirms Apple Intelligence is “custom-built in collaboration with Google and its Gemini models,” hosted partly on Google’s cloud on Nvidia Blackwell-class GPUs under Private Cloud Compute’s privacy framing (Nvidia hosting detail reported 06-04, ahead of the keynote). (Apple Newsroom)

2026-03-02 — the cloud-hosting detail first breaks

• Apple in talks to host the new Siri’s compute on Google’s cloud rather than purely on-device — first reported via The Information, and the same underlying story that gets mis-dated to July by MSN’s syndication (see 07-27 entry above). (Gadget Hacks)

2026-01-12 — official deal confirmed, terms partially disclosed

• Google and Apple jointly confirm a multi-year Gemini partnership: “the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google’s Gemini models and cloud technology,” with hybrid on-device/Private Cloud Compute processing explicitly preserved. No financial terms or exclusivity disclosed officially — the reported ~$1B/yr figure (Bloomberg, 2025-11-05) has never been confirmed by either company. (Google’s joint statement)