Apple used its WWDC 2026 keynote to reveal the most sweeping rethink of its voice assistant in more than a decade — a rebuilt, conversational “Siri AI” that leans on a custom version of Google’s Gemini — yet its shares fell after the event, as investors focused less on the vision than on when they will actually be able to use it.
The June 8 keynote in Cupertino put Siri AI at the centre of a next-generation Apple Intelligence. Apple says the reimagined assistant can hold a back-and-forth conversation, read what is on a user’s screen, and pull answers from personal messages, emails and photos. A dedicated Siri app will let users revisit past conversations and results, with the assistant available across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and the Vision Pro headset.
The most notable shift sits under the hood. Apple confirmed that heavier reasoning and broad world-knowledge requests are routed to a custom, Apple-tuned version of Google’s Gemini running inside its Private Cloud Compute servers, while on-device tasks such as dictation, on-screen awareness and quick personal lookups stay on Apple’s own foundation models. Reports put the multi-year arrangement with Google at roughly $1 billion a year — a notable admission of dependence for a company that prefers to build its core technology in-house.
Beyond Siri, Apple detailed a wave of Apple Intelligence updates across its apps, including tab management in Safari, one-tap password updates, AI-generated reply suggestions in Messages, and a Phone app that can pull context from Mail and Messages mid-call. The company also showed new parental controls and the usual sweep of software updates spanning iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS, watchOS and visionOS.
For all that breadth, the reveal was not enough to satisfy Wall Street on the day. Apple touched an intraday record near $317 while chief executive Tim Cook was still on stage, then reversed to close at $301.54, down about 1.9% — even as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq finished higher. The slide continued in the sessions that followed, with the stock closing near $290 on June 10.
The sticking point was timing. Siri AI arrived on June 8 as a developer beta, with consumers told to wait until the autumn and no firm date for a full rollout. Apple said the upgrade would launch first in English, with the European Union and China left out of the initial release on regulatory grounds. Veteran Apple analyst Gene Munster said the stock was sliding precisely because the company offered no timeline for Siri.
For eToro, the dip fit a familiar pattern. “While Apple outlined a clearer AI vision, investors remain focused on execution,” the trading platform said in commentary from Josh Gilbert, its lead analyst for the Middle East, noting that shares fell around 2% after the event despite a roughly 50% rally over the past year. Gilbert said Apple’s stock has closed lower on the first day of WWDC in 16 of the past 20 years, by an average of about 1.4%, only to often recover in the following weeks — in 2024, the shares dropped on day one but ended the WWDC week up nearly 8%.
Analysts appeared less rattled than the day-one move suggested, with several lifting their price targets after the event even as the stock fell. The larger question now is whether leaning on Google’s Gemini lets Apple close a long-criticised gap in AI — or underlines how far it had fallen behind. For now, the company has given investors a clearer destination without telling them exactly when they will arrive.
