BEYOND VIRTUAL

Once upon a time, tech giants competed to prove who was smarter.
Now, they’re quietly borrowing each other’s brains.

In what could mark a turning point for the industry, reports suggest Apple is preparing to integrate Google’s Gemini AI into Siri. This partnership would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

On paper, it’s a win-win. Apple gets to close the AI gap that’s left Siri lagging behind ChatGPT and Gemini, while Google gains access to one of the most valuable user ecosystems on Earth- the iPhone.

But beneath the headlines lies a deeper story: a shift in how intelligence itself is being built, shared, and owned.

We’ve entered an era where even the world’s most powerful companies no longer stand alone. Innovation now depends on alliances, licensing deals, and borrowed algorithms, a web of shared intelligence that blurs the line between collaboration and dependence.

And as AI becomes the engine behind everything from creativity to commerce, we may begin to see this trend replicated across multiple industries.

Feature Story

Siri’s New Brain

For more than a decade, Apple has built its brand around independence, designing its own chips, building its own software, and protecting user privacy with religious devotion. So when rumors surfaced that Apple might use Google’s Gemini to power the next version of Siri, many were surprised.

If true, it would be one of the biggest philosophical pivots in Apple’s history.

For Apple, the motivation is clear: catch up fast.
Siri, once a pioneer of voice AI, has fallen far behind newer models like ChatGPT and Gemini. By tapping into Google’s vast AI infrastructure, Apple could leap forward in months instead of years without compromising its famously polished user experience.

For Google, the benefits are equally strategic. Embedding Gemini inside iPhones could make its technology the unseen engine behind hundreds of millions of daily interactions. In one move, Google could extend its reach into Apple’s extremely guarded space, a place it has spent years trying to access.

But the trade-off runs deep. Can Apple, a company built on thinking differently, stay true to its identity while borrowing another company’s intelligence?

There’s also the question of power dynamics. When giants like Apple and Google partner, innovation may accelerate, but diversity of thought can shrink. The same few players begin to shape how billions of people interact with information, creativity, and even reality itself.

In the race to stay ahead, Apple may not just be rewriting Siri’s code, it could be rewriting what independence means in the age of AI.

Visionary Voices

Plugged Into Power

Years ago, computer scientist Andrew Ng made a prediction that feels almost prophetic today:

“AI is the new electricity.”

His point was simple: just as electricity transformed every industry it touched, AI will eventually power everything from logistics to art to healthcare. But what he didn’t say (or perhaps didn’t yet know) was that most of us wouldn’t be generating that power ourselves. We’d be plugging in.

Today, very few companies are building AI from scratch. Even the giants are borrowing, Apple from Google, Google from Nvidia, and countless startups from OpenAI’s APIs. It’s an ecosystem of dependency thinly veiled as innovation.

And maybe that’s not entirely a bad thing. However, when everyone relies on the same handful of models, the same “intelligence suppliers”, we risk losing diversity. Different companies may have different missions, but if they all share the same ‘brain’, how different will their outcomes really be?

Now the story of AI isn’t just about machines getting smarter; it’s about who owns the outlets we’re all plugging into.

And that brings us to the next shift happening quietly across industries, from startups to multinationals: the rise of AI partnerships as a kind of insurance policy.

When the cost of failure is high and innovation moves faster than budgets can keep up, dependency becomes a survival strategy.

The Trend

AI Partnerships: Security Against Failure

In theory, AI is everywhere. In practice, only a few companies are seeing real returns from it.

Recent studies show that over 95% of organizations adopting AI haven’t yet realized a tangible profit increase. Many projects stall in experimentation, not because the technology doesn’t work, but because implementation is hard, costly, and often misaligned with actual business needs.

Interestingly, the small percentage of companies that do see results tend to rely on major AI providers, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google, rather than developing everything in-house.

For many businesses, partnering with a larger AI player isn’t just about convenience. It’s about insurance against failure.

Plugging into a platform like ChatGPT or Gemini provides companies with reliability, compliance, and constant updates - things that would otherwise take years (and millions) to build internally.

But in the race for companies to survive, something strange is happening. The same companies powering AI’s biggest breakthroughs are increasingly powering each other.

Apple may turn to Google’s Gemini to boost Siri. Google licenses data from Reddit to train its models. Microsoft bankrolls OpenAI, which in turn runs on Microsoft’s Azure cloud. Money, data, and computing power now circulate in a tight loop, with only a handful of players holding the keys.

Analysts are beginning to call this the AI bubble, a system where innovation feeds on itself, and the same few companies trade data, licensing deals, and cloud infrastructure to stay ahead. It’s efficient, yes. But it’s also starting to look eerily like the early days of the dot-com bubble, when valuation outpaced value.

This loop of borrowing, licensing, and cross-licensing is becoming the new normal. The trend suggests that the future of innovation won’t be defined by who builds the smartest AI from scratch, but by who can assemble, integrate, and leverage the right intelligence fastest. In other words, power in AI is no longer just about creation; it’s about connection.

A Final Note

As the situation between Apple and Google unfolds, one thing becomes clear: no company is truly independent anymore. Even the giants are plugging into each other’s intelligence, relying on shared platforms, data, and infrastructure to stay competitive. The question now is who can assemble the right combination of tools fastest, as opposed to who can build the best AI tools from scratch.

We can only hope that in this race, the diversity that drives meaningful innovation isn’t lost. When a handful of companies control the cognitive engines behind billions of interactions, creativity risks becoming uniform. As the saying goes, two heads are better than one, but if those heads all think alike, the future they shape may be less varied, less surprising, and less inspiring than we hope.

Until next time,

At The VA Group, we help businesses harness AI to enhance human creativity, streamline processes, and drive measurable growth, all while staying ethical and transparent.

Curious what your team could achieve with the right AI solutions? 

Reach out to The VA Group and let’s explore how to turn AI into your next competitive advantage. Click here.