Apple Agrees $1 Billion Annual Google Deal for Gemini and Scales Model Training on TPUs

Apple agreed to pay Google $1 billion a year for access to Gemini technology under a multiyear agreement signed in January 2026, Crypto Briefing reported on October 28, 2026. The deal extends a partnership that began in 2024, when Apple trained its first Apple Foundation Models on Google Cloud TPUs.

How Apple Trains Its Models on Google TPUs

Apple is scaling up pre-training of its foundation models on Google's Tensor Processing Units, the custom chips Google built for machine learning workloads. Apple's first AFM server model was trained on a cluster of 8,192 TPU v4 chips, while the smaller on-device model was built on a 2,048-chip slice of TPU v5p chips. The move gave Apple more than 2x the floating point operations per second and triple the high bandwidth memory, cutting training time for large language models by up to 2.8 times.

Apple revealed in July 2024 that it had trained its initial AFM models on Google Cloud TPUs rather than the NVIDIA GPUs most of the industry used. The shift came amid NVIDIA H100 supply issues, combined with what the research describes as the superior performance and cost-effectiveness of Google's TPUs for Apple's needs. In June 2026, Apple announced its third-generation AFM models, a release that marked custom development work done with Google. One of those models, AFM 3 Cloud Pro, operates on NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs inside Google Cloud.

Apple maintains that no private user data was used to train its foundation models, and it says it honors publisher opt-out preferences.

Apple's Gemini Deal in Company Records

Apple's company records list a June 2026 partnership with T-Mobile, which runs a promotional campaign offering free iPhone 17 models through 24-month bill credits. The same records list Apple TV+ as the exclusive streaming home for Formula 1 racing and for Friday Night Baseball under a partnership with Major League Baseball. Apple's website hosts its product information.

Apple's Earlier Moves Before the Gemini Agreement

Apple acquired MotionVFX in March 2026 to enhance Final Cut Pro with professional effects and plugins, extending its creator-tools vertical, according to akta.pro company records. John Ternus succeeded Tim Cook as CEO on September 1, 2025, the first CEO transition since 2011, triggering a hardware engineering reorganization under new Chief Hardware Officer Johny Srouji. Apple acquired Israeli company TrueMeeting in January 2025 for real-time 3D avatar technology from face scans, signaling continued investment in Vision Pro and spatial computing capabilities.

Google's Gemini Reach Across Advertising and Search

Google's Gemini AI models have helped advertisers generate over 1.5 billion ad assets, including headlines, images and videos, within its ad tools, Crypto Briefing reported. Advertisers using Gemini in Performance Max campaigns are 63% more likely to receive a "Good" or "Excellent" Ad Strength rating. Google also reported that its visual searches now exceed 50 billion per month, surpassing Lens's projected 20 billion, with 20% of Lens searches showing commercial intent.