Apple Inc. recently announced that John Giannandrea, the current head of artificial intelligence, will retire in spring 2026, during which he will continue to serve as a company advisor. Giannandrea joined Apple in 2018, and previously led search and artificial intelligence operations at Google. His departure is seen as an important adjustment in Apple's AI organizational structure following setbacks in the Siri upgrade.

Apple 4

The position left by Giannandrea will be taken over by Amar Subramanya, who previously served as a corporate vice president at Microsoft and led the engineering work on the Gemini assistant. Subramanya will serve as Apple's vice president, reporting directly to Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering, and will be responsible for areas such as Apple's foundational models, machine learning research, and AI safety and evaluation. Apple stated that Subramanya has deep expertise in AI and machine learning research, and expects him to drive continuous innovation in "Apple Intelligence" features.

At the same time, some teams previously managed by Giannandrea will be transferred to Sabih Khan, the new chief operating officer, and Eddy Cue, who has long been responsible for service business. Khan took over as COO earlier this year, succeeding Jeff Williams, with a focus on strengthening supply chain and operational management; while Cue will continue to integrate AI capabilities into content and service ecosystems.

Apple CEO Tim Cook expressed gratitude to Giannandrea for his contributions to the company's AI efforts and reiterated that AI has always been at the core of Apple's strategy. He looks forward to working with Subramanya and praised Federighi for his role in advancing next-generation AI experiences such as personalized Siri.

Giannandrea's departure coincides with Apple experiencing a major setback in its Siri strategy. Apple had planned to launch a new Siri based on "Apple Intelligence" at the 2024 WWDC and promote it as a key feature of iOS 18 and the iPhone 16 series. However, due to the inability to deliver the promised Siri functions as planned, the company announced in early 2025 that the upgrade would be postponed to spring 2026. This delay triggered a wave of departures of senior executives and key personnel within Apple's AI team, prompting Apple to accelerate the transformation of Siri to enhance personal context understanding, screen content perception, and application integration capabilities.

Currently, the industry generally expects that Apple is in talks with Google to introduce more advanced Gemini technology to support upgrades to the new Siri and other Apple Intelligence features.

Key points:

🌟 Giannandrea will retire in 2026, continuing to serve as a company advisor.  

🔄 Amar Subramanya will take over, responsible for Apple's AI strategy and foundational model research.  

📉 The delay in the Siri upgrade has caused a loss of senior executives and key personnel within the company.