apple AI The AI business has a new leader.
On December 1, local time, Apple announced the appointment of senior researcher Amar Subramanya as Vice President of Artificial Intelligence , succeeding John Giannandrea, who will retire from Apple in the spring of 2026 and continue to serve as an advisor to the company until then.
Subramaniam will report to Craig Federighi. He will lead key areas including Apple's foundational models, machine learning research, and AI safety and assessment. The remainder of Janandrea's team will be handed over to Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue to allow for closer integration with similar teams.
Public information shows that Subramania previously served as Microsoft's... The vice president of an artificial intelligence company, who previously worked at Google for 16 years.
Apple stated that Subramania brings a wealth of experience to Apple, his deep expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning research, and his ability to integrate these findings into products and features, which are crucial to Apple's continued innovation and future Apple Intelligence capabilities.
Apple CEO Tim Cook thanked Giannandrea for his contributions to advancing the company's AI efforts, emphasizing that AI has long been a core part of Apple's strategy. Cook also stated that in addition to strengthening the leadership team and taking on more AI responsibilities with Subramaniam, Federighi has played a key role in driving AI initiatives, including overseeing Apple's plans to bring a more personalized Siri to users next year.
This reshuffle of Apple's AI head is considered a significant adjustment to its AI organizational structure. Giannardrea's departure comes after Apple experienced a major setback in its Siri strategy. Apple had announced a new Siri based on "Apple Intelligence" at WWDC 2024, making it one of the key selling points of iOS 18 and the iPhone 16 series. However, in early 2025, the company announced that it could not launch the promised Siri features as originally planned and had to postpone the upgrade to the spring of 2026.
Foreign media pointed out that in the field of artificial intelligence, Apple's investment and performance lag far behind other technology companies, and compared with Microsoft , Google and others, Apple prefers to run AI on local devices rather than connect to the cloud.
Genandrea's retirement was not unexpected, as there were previous reports that Cook had lost confidence in Genandrea's product development and execution capabilities.
Furthermore, Apple's AI division has experienced a large-scale exodus. This year, more than a dozen core model researchers from Apple's AI team have left, many of whom have joined Meta's new AI division, Super Intelligence Lab (MSL).
On October 15th of this year, according to foreign media reports, Ke Yang, the Apple executive in charge of developing AI web search, is about to leave the company and join Meta. In July, Meta was reported to have poached Ruoming Pang, a former outstanding Apple engineer and head of Apple's AI model team, with a salary exceeding $200 million. Subsequently, four more Apple AI engineers jumped ship to Meta. In August, Frank Chu, a key executive in Apple's AI team responsible for managing cloud infrastructure, model training, and search function development, was also poached by Meta.
(Source: The Paper)
