Apple AI chief exits

John Giannandrea, the Apple executive who led the company’s artificial intelligence work, is leaving this week after moving into an advisory role in December. (apple.com, macrumors.com) Apple said on December 1, 2025 that Giannandrea was stepping down as senior vice president for machine learning and artificial intelligence strategy and would retire in spring 2026. The company named Amar Subramanya vice president of artificial intelligence, reporting to software chief Craig Federighi. (apple.com) That change followed an earlier Siri shake-up in March 2025, when Bloomberg reported, and other outlets matched, that Vision Pro creator Mike Rockwell took over the Siri team. Rockwell was set to report to Federighi, removing Siri from Giannandrea’s direct control. (macrumors.com, usatoday.com) The management changes came after Apple delayed the more personalized Siri features it had promoted as part of Apple Intelligence. Apple said on March 7, 2025 that features giving Siri more awareness of personal context and the ability to act across apps would arrive later than planned, with a new target of “the coming year.” (cnbc.com) Those delayed features were central to Apple’s pitch that Siri would become more useful by understanding what is on a user’s screen, drawing on personal information across apps, and completing multi-step tasks. Apple had shown those capabilities when it introduced Apple Intelligence in 2024, but the full upgrade did not ship on the original timetable. (cnbc.com, pcmag.com) Giannandrea joined Apple from Google in 2018 and became one of the company’s top artificial intelligence leaders. Apple said his organization had been responsible for Apple Foundation Models, search and knowledge, machine learning research, and artificial intelligence infrastructure. (apple.com) Apple’s December announcement also redistributed his former organization beyond the new artificial intelligence lead. The company said parts of the group would shift to operations chief Sabih Khan and services chief Eddy Cue, while Federighi took a larger role in overseeing artificial intelligence work tied to Siri. (apple.com) The immediate question now is execution, not branding. Apple has already shipped some Apple Intelligence features, including writing tools, notification summaries, image features, and ChatGPT integration on supported devices, but the Siri overhaul that was supposed to tie those pieces together remains unfinished. (cnbc.com) Giannandrea’s exit closes an eight-year run that began with Apple trying to strengthen its artificial intelligence bench and ends with Siri under new leadership. Apple’s next test is whether the reorganized team can deliver the assistant it previewed and then postponed. (apple.com, macrumors.com)