Giannandrea will serve as an advisor from now until 2026, with former Microsoft AI researcher Amar Subramaniam set to take over as vice president of AI. Subramaniam will report to Apple engineering chief Craig Federighi and lead Apple Foundation models, ML research, and AI security and evaluation.
Subramaniam was previously corporate vice president of AI at Microsoft and before that, he spent 16 years at Google. He was the head of engineering for Google’s Gemini Assistant, and Apple says he has “deep expertise” in both AI and ML research that will be critical to “Apple’s ongoing innovation and future Apple Intelligence features.”
Some teams overseen by Giannandrea will move to Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue, such as AI Infrastructure and Search and Knowledge. Khan is Apple’s new chief operating officer, replacing Jeff Williams earlier this year. Q has overseen Apple services for a long time.
Apple CEO Tim Cook thanked Giannandrea for his role in advancing Apple’s AI work and said he looked forward to working with Subramaniam. He also said that Federighi has played an important role in Apple’s AI efforts.
“We are grateful for the role John played in building and advancing our AI work, helping Apple innovate and enrich the lives of our users,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook. “AI has long been central to Apple’s strategy, and we are delighted to welcome Amar to Craig’s leadership team and bring his extraordinary AI expertise to Apple. In addition to growing his leadership team and AI responsibilities with Amar’s addition, Craig has played a key role in driving our AI efforts, including overseeing our work to bring a more personalized Siri to users next year.”
Apple said it is “ready to accelerate our work to deliver intelligent, reliable, and deeply personalized experiences” with the new AI team.
Giannandrea’s departure follows Apple’s major iOS 18 Siri failure. Apple introduced a smart, “Apple Intelligence” version of Siri at WWDC 2024, and advertised the functionality when marketing the iPhone 16. In early 2025, Apple announced that it would not be able to release the promised version of Siri as planned, and the update was delayed until spring 2026.
The exodus of Apple’s AI team comes as Apple strives to improve Siri and provide features like personalized context, onscreen awareness, and better app integration. Now Apple is rumored to be partnering with Google for a more advanced version of Siri and other Apple Intelligence features that are set to arrive next year.
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