John Giannandrea, senior vice president for machine learning and AI at Apple, is resigning from his role and will serve as an advisor to the company before retiring in the spring of 2026.
Giannandrea, a British software engineer and entrepreneur, has a long and versatile career in the tech industry. He co-founded speech recognition company Tellme Networks in 1999 and Metaweb Technologies in 2005, before being acquired by Google in 2010.
He also worked as chief technologist at Netscape and senior engineer at the software and electronics company General Magic. In 2003, Giannandrea worked at Google, where he led Google’s Search division and was promoted to head of the Artificial Intelligence department.
In 2018, he left Google to join Apple, becoming the company’s senior vice president of machine learning and artificial intelligence. This team is currently responsible for Apple Foundation Models, Search and Knowledge, Machine Learning Research, and AI Infrastructure.
AI researcher Amar Subramanya is taking on Giannandrea’s position as senior vice president. Subramanya also worked at Google for 16 years, where he was head of engineering for Google’s Gemini Assistant. At Apple, he will be leading critical areas, including Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI Safety and Evaluation.
Apple CEO Tim Cook is grateful for all that Giannandrea has done for the company.
“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,” Cook states in a press release.
“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,” he continues.
Giannandrea will continue to serve Apple as an advisor to the company before retiring in the spring of 2026.
Why Apple is relieving Giannandrea of his position remains unclear, but it might have something to do with the delayed rollout plans for the next generation of Siri, Apple’s AI-centric assistant it previewed last year, putting pressure on his position.
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