John Giannandrea Is Out

Apple has announced that John Giannandrea, Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, will retire in the spring of 2026. He will initially serve as an advisor to the company before his departure. Concurrently, AI researcher Amar Subramanya has joined Apple as Vice President of AI. Subramanya will report to Craig Federighi and oversee areas like Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI Safety. The remainder of Giannandrea's organization will be integrated with other teams under Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue. This announcement follows recent challenges with Apple Intelligence and Siri features, which were delayed until 2026. An executive reshuffling had already occurred after this delay, placing Mike Rockwell in charge of Siri. The author suggests Giannandrea was likely pushed out, especially given reports of Tim Cook losing confidence in his product development abilities. Subramanya, who recently moved from Google to Microsoft, likely joined Apple due to an attractive offer or dissatisfaction with his new role.