Apple Inc. today announced the departure of its AI chief, John Giannandrea, who will be replaced by AI researcher Amar Subramanya, a longtime Google LLC executive who more recently worked for Microsoft Corp.
Giannandrea joined Apple in 2018 to help improve the company’s voice assistant after previously working at Google in AI and Search. After Giannandrea’s team failed to deliver Siri’s promised Apple Intelligence upgrades unveiled at WWDC 2024, Apple stripped him of direct control over the voice assistant in March. Since then, he has shifted to overseeing the development of Apple’s core AI models, while Vision Pro architect Mike Rockwell has assumed leadership of Siri. Giannandrea will remain at the company in an advisory role until early next year, when he retires.
According to Bloomberg, Apple’s Chief Executive, Tim Cook, had “lost confidence” in Giannandrea to bring the company’s AI efforts up to speed to match rivals in an area where Apple has been behind. The Bloomberg article describes chaos at the company as the deadline for new Siri features was delayed, with the company’s Top 100 – the senior leaders – meeting in secret to discuss the future of the company, whereafter Giannandrea moved into his new role.
Subramanya had spent 16 years at Google as head of engineering for Gemini, only joining Microsoft at the start of 2025. Apple said that Subramanya will report to software chief Craig Federighi, and will be leading critical areas, including Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI Safety and Evaluation.
“We are thankful for the role John played in building and advancing our AI work, helping Apple continue to innovate and enrich the lives of our users,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. “AI has long been central to Apple’s strategy, and we are pleased to welcome Amar to Craig’s leadership team and to bring his extraordinary AI expertise to Apple. In addition to growing his leadership team and AI responsibilities with Amar’s joining, Craig has been instrumental in driving our AI efforts, including overseeing our work to bring a more personalized Siri to users next year.”
Photo: Unsplash
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