Apple AI Chief John Giannandrea Retiring After Siri Delays

[MacRumors]

Apple AI chief John Giannandrea is stepping down from his position and retiring in spring 2026, Apple announced today.

Giannandrea will serve as an advisor between now and 2026, with former Microsoft AI researcher Amar Subramanya set to take over as vice president of AI. Subramanya will report to Apple engineering chief Craig Federighi, and will lead Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI Safety and Evaluation.

Subramanya was previously corporate vice president of AI at Microsoft, and before that, he spent 16 years at Google. He was head of engineering for Google's Gemini Assistant, and Apple says that he has "deep expertise" in both AI and ML research that will be important to "Apple's ongoing innovation and future Apple Intelligence features."

Some of the teams that Giannandrea oversaw will move to Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue, such as AI Infrastructure and Search and Knowledge. Khan is Apple's new Chief Operating Officer who took over for Jeff Williams earlier this year. Cue has long overseen Apple services.

Apple CEO Tim Cook thanked Giannandrea for his role advancing Apple's AI work, and he said that he looks forward to working with Subramanya. He also said that Federighi has played an important role in Apple's AI efforts.

"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."

Apple said that it is "poised to accelerate its work in delivering intelligent, trusted, and profoundly personal experiences" with the new AI team.

Giannandrea's departure comes after Apple's major iOS 18 Siri failure. Apple introduced a smarter, "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 updates were delayed until spring 2026.

An exodus of Apple's AI team followed as Apple scrambled to improve Siri and deliver on features like personal context, onscreen awareness, and improved app integration. Apple is now rumored to be partnering with Google for a more advanced version of Siri and other Apple Intelligence features that are set to come out next year.

Article Link: Apple AI Chief John Giannandrea Retiring After Siri Delays

 

[MacUserFella]

If Apple can’t make Siri good or build AI, how can I trust them to put a robot in my house?

 

[jz0309]

Apple AI chief John Giannandrea is stepping down from his position and retiring in spring, 2026

forced or voluntary retirement?

Well, happy retirement in either case, (unfortunately,) I don't think he'll be missed ...

 

[nickf]

It sounds like Giannandrea got retired. I'm surprised Zuckerberg didn't offer him $200m just for lols.

 

[ProbablyDylan]

Giannandrea will serve as an advisor between now and 2026, with former Microsoft AI researcher Amar Subramanya set to take over as vice president of AI.

Amar spent 16 years at Google working on ML/AI, last thing he worked on being Gemini. He's only been at MS since July this year. I wonder what kind of offer Tim made him to bring him on board only ~4 months after starting with MS.

 

[nfl46]

Lol. You mean, they forced him to retire/quit.

 

[Falco McGregor]

forced or voluntary retirement?

Well, happy retirement in either case, (unfortunately,) I don't think he'll be missed ...

Whether it's fully his fault or not, his name is inextricably linked to Apple's AI shortcomings. I doubt he's going to be able to gain another high profile executive position at a major firm. So the solution is likely to take the forced retirement, take stock of his 60 years and what that means for future employment, and probably do some consulting and sit on some boards.

 

[gleepskip]

I think Apple should hire GPT-5 to run its Apple Intelligence program. It would be cheaper and the results would certainly not be any worse.

 

[hieranonymous]

I guess it makes sense that a guy who oversaw the development of Gemini at Google will now oversee the development of a version of Siri that is powered by a white-label instance of Gemini.

 

[Kidseeghost]

That was just a matter of time after the whole Siri debacle.

 

[dampfnudel]

Amar spent 16 years at Google working on ML/AI, last thing he worked on being Gemini. He's only been at MS since July this year. I wonder what kind of offer Tim made him to bring him on board only ~4 months after starting with MS.

The desperate kind.

 

[hieranonymous]

Whether it's fully his fault or not, his name is inextricably linked to Apple's AI shortcomings. I doubt he's going to be able to gain another high profile executive position at a major firm. So the solution is likely to take the forced retirement, take stock of his 60 years and what that means for future employment, and probably do some consulting and sit on some boards.

If I were him I would just take the money and eff off to the Mediterranean and never think about any of this stuff or any of these people ever again.

 

[AnotherOpinion]

It baffles me how far behind Apple is with Ai. They are a huge tech giant… perhaps they were working too much on Project Titan, Vision Pro, and lost track of time. But they are really losing this race which is gong to cost them big time

 

[springsup]

The real story here isn’t necessarily AI, but that whatever the next big step in technology is, Apple is no longer able to own it and get ahead of it.

They have much bigger and better competitors now. One company that doesn’t get enough mention is Facebook - they are doing much better with both “spatial computing” and AI, which are the big things Apple has reached for as the next big thing and publicly failed at. I’m sure Apple wish they could be doing as well as they are, which is an interesting position for them to be in.

 

[Elwe]

The desperate kind.

Not necessarily. At this level of executive, timing often has a lot to do with things. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if he was in the “interview process” with Apple prior to his acceptance with Microsoft. Maybe Apple wasn’t ready to make a decision. Maybe they up an offer for him after thinking about it more. And maybe he got to Microsoft and had less influence than what they sold. I’ve seen all these things happen.

In the end, it seems clear that Cook wants AI efforts to not the their own thing. He wants it to serve Engineering and Apple holistically. It is probably the wise thing, but this is the kind of decision-making that has people question if they need to put an AI-first, software-first person in charge. I don’t think he (and others) like the out-of-control spending that is going on.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

If Apple can’t make Siri good or build AI, how can I trust them to put a robot in my house?

This is like saying “if Apple can’t lead in the search engine race, how can I trust them to make an Internet capable phone” in 2007.
AI is a feature, not a product.

 

[canukstorm]

I wonder what kind of offer Tim made him to bring him on board only ~4 months after starting with MS

Maybe Cook offered him $200 million. /s

 

[Kidseeghost]

It baffles me how far behind Apple is with Ai. They are a huge tech giant… perhaps they were working too much on Project Titan, Vision Pro, and lost track of time. But they are really losing this race which is gong to cost them big time

This won't cost them. Their mistake was jumping on the AI hype bandwagon instead of ignoring it as they initially did (after AI became popular, Apple called it machine learning and strictly avoided the term AI). They should have ignored it and instead worked behind the scenes to gradually integrate genuinely useful AI features into their operating systems (not this Genmoji nonsense) and launch a major campaign for human made art (which they're doing now) to differentiate themselves from all the AI slop. I think they stopped promoting AI stuff not just because they failed to deliver but they probably realized the bubble is about to burst and for most people AI is a negative term. Their failure to deliver AI like everyone else will work in their favor when the bubble bursts.

 

[canukstorm]

Their failure to deliver AI like everyone else will work in their favor when the bubble bursts.

Gemini 3 is pretty good.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

It baffles me how far behind Apple is with Ai.

It really shouldn’t be that baffling for anyone who has paid attention to the company for the past 30 years.
Internet services, which is fundamentally what AI is at the moment, have never, ever, ever been an apple Strong suit.
Not under Jobs, not under cook.
iCloud was Apple‘s third attempt at a clouds service, the previous two attempts in .Mac and Mobile Me being absolute failures.
Apple has never been a leader in the search engine industry, despite having their own web browser and the internet being the biggest selling point of their devices.
Apple has never lead in social media, or video hosting, or anything like that.

 

[superarijit]

This is really on Tiny Tim -- choosing the worst guy possible and then spending billions. Plus Apple Car, VisionPro, disastrous 26 with silly fashionista BS. Apple AI fantasized about doing their own LLM when they couldn't even get Siri to do basics.