Apple unveiled its third-generation Apple Foundation Models (AFM 3) at WWDC26, rolling out an ecosystem of five specialized AI models designed to run locally on hardware and remotely in the cloud. The framework is the backbone for a completely rebuilt Siri, which also utilizes a $1 billion annual licensing agreement with Google’s Gemini technology.
The lineup scales from lightweight on-device processors up to complex server-side systems. While four of the models process natively on Apple silicon, the top-tier AFM 3 Cloud Pro shifts its workload to Nvidia hardware hosted entirely within Google Cloud, extending Apple’s strict Private Cloud Compute guarantees outside its own data centers for the first time.
The local AI operation centers on two distinct hardware tiers:
- AFM 3 Core: A dense, 3-billion parameter model built for standard local processing.
- AFM 3 Core Advanced: A 20-billion parameter model that utilizes a sparse architecture, activating only one to four billion parameters per request to preserve efficiency.
In a technical shift, the Advanced model stores its weight set directly in NAND flash storage rather than standard DRAM, pulling only the required data to process a prompt.
Running this top-tier local intelligence comes with strict hardware constraints. Devices require at least 12GB of RAM to operate the Advanced model natively. This limits compatibility directly to upcoming hardware releases, specifically the iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Air, M4 iPads, and M3 Macs.
For requests exceeding local hardware limits, the system hands the prompt to server-side infrastructure. Apple introduced AFM 3 Cloud for speed, a specialized diffusion model called ADM 3 Cloud for image editing, and AFM 3 Cloud Pro for complex reasoning. Operating the Pro model required an unprecedented expansion of Apple’s Private Cloud Compute infrastructure into Google Cloud utilizing Nvidia Blackwell GPUs and Intel hardware.
Why the SiriKit Deprecation Forces an Ecosystem Migration
This architectural overhaul fundamentally changes how third-party apps interact with Apple’s operating systems. As a direct result of the AFM 3 rollout, Apple issued a formal deprecation notice for SiriKit. Developers must now rebuild their integrations using the newer App Intents framework to maintain compatibility with the upgraded Siri voice assistant.
To accelerate this transition and undercut AI competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic, Apple is offering its Foundation Models API entirely for free to developers with fewer than two million app downloads, according to Tech Funding News. By subsidizing the API costs for the majority of the app ecosystem, Apple guarantees rapid adoption of its new infrastructure while freezing out third-party AI models from the iOS environment.