Apple Announces New AI Lead as John Giannandrea Moves to Advisory Role

Apple has announced that John Giannandrea will step down as the company’s artificial intelligence chief. He will be replaced by Amar Subramanya, an AI researcher who spent many years at Google and who joined Microsoft earlier in 2025.

Giannandrea came to Apple in 2018 to work on the company’s voice assistant after a long career in AI at Google. After his team did not deliver the Apple Intelligence improvements for Siri that were expected after WWDC 2024, Apple removed his direct oversight of the voice assistant in March. He then moved to focus on Apple’s core AI models while Mike Rockwell, who helped design Vision Pro, took over leadership of Siri.

Giannandrea will stay with Apple in an advisory capacity until early next year, when he plans to retire.

Reports say Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook had “lost confidence” in Giannandrea’s ability to speed up Apple’s AI work and match competitors. Those reports also described internal disorder as the deadline for new Siri features slipped, and said the company’s senior leaders met privately to discuss next steps before Giannandrea’s role was changed.

Amar Subramanya spent about 16 years at Google and led engineering for Gemini. He moved to Microsoft at the start of 2025. Apple said he will report to software chief Craig Federighi and will lead areas such as Apple foundation models, machine learning research and AI safety and evaluation.

Tim Cook offered a public thanks to Giannandrea and a welcome to Subramanya. “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 said in a statement

“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.”