John Giannandrea leaving Apple following AI strategy miss

Apple has announced that John Giannandrea, the company’s Machine Learning and AI Strategy boss, is retiring from the company. The move may not come as a surprise for anyone closely following Apple and its AI missteps over the last few years.

Here’s the news from the official press release:

Apple today announced John Giannandrea, Apple’s senior vice president for Machine Learning and AI Strategy, is stepping down from his position and will serve as an advisor to the company before retiring in the spring of 2026. Apple also announced that renowned AI researcher Amar Subramanya has joined Apple as vice president of AI, reporting to Craig Federighi. Subramanya will be leading critical areas, including Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI Safety and Evaluation. The balance of Giannandrea’s organization will shift to Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue to align closer with similar organizations.

As noted above, Amar Subramanya is joining Apple to take over as VP of AI under Craig Federighi. Siri itself is ran by Mike Rockwell who also reports to Federighi.

Subramanya comes by way of Microsoft AI and like Giannandrea, is a former Googler. He joined Microsoft in June after 16 years at Google. Apple has now tapped him to lead its own AI strategy.

The announcement also notes that Giannandrea will stick around as an advisor to Apple before fully retiring in the spring. However, the shift from Giannandrea to Subramanya is happening now.

The press release shares a bit about Subramanya as well:

Subramanya brings a wealth of experience to Apple, having most recently served as corporate vice president of AI at Microsoft, and previously spent 16 years at Google, where he was head of engineering for Google’s Gemini Assistant prior to his departure. His deep expertise in both AI and ML research and in integrating that research into products and features will be important to Apple’s ongoing innovation and future Apple Intelligence features.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is quoted in the release where he thanks Giannandrea for his time at the company and welcomes Subramanya:

“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,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “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.”

Giannandrea left Google and joined Apple in 2018 before quickly being promoted before the end of the year.

Under Giannandrea’s leadership, Apple largely dismissed generative AI in the early days of its shift to mainstream adoption. As a result, Apple announced a suite of generative AI features under the umbrella term Apple Intelligence.

While most announced Apple Intelligence features have shipped and seen year-over-year revisions, the most ambitious AI project involving Siri is still in development.

Apple announced an overhauled version of Siri in June 2024 with a promise to ship it as part of iOS 18. Instead, Apple had to publicly delay the release until 2026. The fix involves using Google’s Gemini model instead of Apple’s in-house generative AI models to power the more advanced Siri.

Robby Walker, the executive in charge of the project at Apple, has also left the company this year after losing the project in an organizational shuffle.

The upgraded version of Siri is now expected to arrive in spring 2026 as part of iOS 26.4 — around the same time Giannandrea’s retirement kicks in.

You can read the full press release about his departure here.

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