Apple AI chief exits

John Giannandrea, the Apple executive hired to lead its artificial intelligence push, is leaving the company this week. (apple.com) Apple said on December 1, 2025 that Giannandrea was stepping down as senior vice president for machine learning and artificial intelligence strategy, moving into an advisory role before retiring in spring 2026. Reports on April 13, 2026 said that advisory period ends this week, around Apple’s April 15 stock-vesting date. (apple.com, 9to5mac.com) Giannandrea joined Apple in April 2018 after nearly eight years at Google, where he had led search, machine intelligence and research. At Apple, he was put in charge of Siri and other core artificial intelligence work, then added to the executive team that December. (cnbc.com) His exit follows a year of changes inside Apple’s artificial intelligence group. Apple reduced his role in March 2025 after delays to the Siri overhaul, and Apple later reassigned parts of his organization to Craig Federighi, Eddy Cue and Sabih Khan. (macrumors.com, apple.com) The immediate problem was Siri. On March 7, 2025, Apple said the more personalized version of Siri it had promoted with Apple Intelligence would take longer than expected and would roll out in 2026 instead of the spring 2025 window many had expected. (cnbc.com) Those delayed features were supposed to let Siri use a customer’s personal context and take actions across apps, like handling requests that move between multiple services on an iPhone. Apple kept shipping other Apple Intelligence features, including writing tools, image generation, notification summaries and ChatGPT integration on supported devices. (cnbc.com) Apple used Giannandrea’s retirement announcement to set out a new chain of command. The company said Amar Subramanya, a former Microsoft and Google executive, joined as vice president of artificial intelligence and would report to software chief Craig Federighi. (apple.com) Apple said Subramanya would lead Apple Foundation Models, machine learning research, and artificial intelligence safety and evaluation, while the rest of Giannandrea’s former organization would be split to better align with other teams. Apple also said Federighi had been overseeing work to bring a more personalized Siri to users in 2026. (apple.com) Outside reports have framed the final step of Giannandrea’s departure as predictable because his authority had already narrowed to an advisory role while his unvested stock finished vesting. Apple’s public position has been to thank him for building its artificial intelligence organization and to present the handoff as part of its next phase of Apple Intelligence work. (macrumors.com, apple.com)