It’s not a surprise, but Apple has announced that John Giannandrea, the company’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.
For better or worse, Giannandrea has born the brunt of criticism for Apple’s languishing AI efforts. The tech giant also announced that 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.
Since joining Apple in 2018, Giannandrea has played a key role in the company’s AI and machine learning strategy. This team is currently responsible for Apple Foundation Models, Search and Knowledge, Machine Learning Research, and AI Infrastructure.
Apple CEO Tim Cook says 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, Cook adds.
“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,” the CEO said. “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.”
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