Apple Removes Former AI Chief John Giannandrea From Executive Leadership Page

Apple's AI Shake-Up: A New Era Begins as AI Chief John Giannandrea Departs

In a move that signals a major shift in its artificial intelligence strategy, Apple has officially confirmed the departure of its AI chief, John Giannandrea. The change was made concrete when Apple updated its executive leadership page, removing his profile and marking the end of an era that promised to revolutionize Siri and Apple's AI capabilities. Giannandrea is set to retire from the company next spring, but his removal from the top brass roster indicates a swift transition as Apple looks to correct its course in the fiercely competitive AI landscape.

This leadership change isn't just a routine retirement; it's the culmination of a series of high-profile struggles, most notably the significant delays and internal turmoil surrounding the ambitious "Apple Intelligence" features promised for Siri. As Apple reshuffles its AI teams and brings in new leadership, the tech world is watching closely. What went wrong under Giannandrea's tenure, and what does this new direction mean for the future of Siri and the intelligence embedded in every Apple device?

A Swift and Decisive Change at the Top

Apple wasted no time in signaling its new direction. Just days after the announcement of Giannandrea's impending retirement, his name and photo vanished from the company's public-facing leadership website. This page is more than just a corporate directory; it’s a statement of who holds the reins of power and strategy at one of the world's most influential companies. The swift removal underscores the urgency Apple feels to publicly turn a new page on its AI narrative.

While Giannandrea will stay on as an advisor until his official departure in spring 2025, the operational control has already shifted. Taking his place is Amar Subramanya, a seasoned executive poached from Microsoft where he served as Corporate Vice President of AI. Interestingly, Subramanya is not yet listed on the leadership page, suggesting a transition period. However, his new role is clear: he will serve as Apple's vice president of AI, reporting directly to Craig Federighi, the senior vice president of Software Engineering. This new reporting structure is a significant strategic move, hinting at a tighter integration of AI development with the core operating systems like iOS and macOS.

The Rise and Fall of a Heralded AI Visionary

To understand the significance of this departure, it's important to look back at why John Giannandrea was hired in the first place. He joined Apple in 2018, a high-profile recruit from Google where he was the senior vice president of engineering, leading the charge on Search and AI. His arrival was seen as a major coup for Apple, a sign that the company was finally getting serious about catching up to rivals like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, whose conversational AI capabilities had long surpassed Siri's.

Giannandrea was appointed to the role of senior vice president of Machine Learning and AI Strategy. His mission was clear: unify Apple’s fragmented AI efforts and, most importantly, fix Siri. He was given oversight of Siri, Core ML (Apple's on-device machine learning framework), and other critical AI projects. The hope was that his expertise would inject new life into Apple's ecosystem, making its devices not just powerful, but truly intelligent and proactive.

For a time, there were signs of progress. Apple's on-device processing for features like photo recognition and keyboard predictions improved steadily. However, the crown jewel, Siri, remained a point of frustration for users and a source of internal challenges for the company.

The Tipping Point: The 'Apple Intelligence' Promise and a Painful Delay

The beginning of the end for Giannandrea's leadership can be traced back to the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) where Apple unveiled iOS 18. The star of the show was a suite of new features branded as Apple Intelligence. This wasn't just another update; it was Apple’s bold answer to the generative AI boom, promising a dramatically smarter, more context-aware, and more capable Siri.

The company demonstrated a Siri that could understand natural language better, perform multi-step tasks, and interact with on-screen content in a deeply integrated way. The demos were impressive and generated significant excitement. Apple then confidently used these unreleased features as a primary marketing pillar for its new iPhone 16 models, building consumer expectations to an all-time high. The message was that the new hardware was essential to unlock this next-generation AI experience.

The plan, however, fell apart. In the spring of 2025, when users were eagerly anticipating the rollout of these transformative features, Apple delivered a stunning blow. The company announced that the smarter version of Siri wasn't ready and that its most advanced capabilities would be hit with a year-long delay. This public failure was a major embarrassment. It not only disappointed customers who had purchased new iPhones based on these promises but also exposed a deep-seated dysfunction within Apple's AI division.

Unpacking the Chaos: What Really Went Wrong With Siri?

Behind the scenes, the ambitious vision for Siri was crumbling under the weight of internal problems. A bombshell report from The Information, based on interviews with more than half a dozen former employees from Apple's AI team, painted a picture of "chaos." The issues were not technical alone but were deeply rooted in culture and leadership. The report identified four key areas of dysfunction:

1. Poor Leadership and Indecision

Employees described a culture of indecision that plagued the AI teams. Under Giannandrea's leadership, there was reportedly a lack of a clear, unified vision for what Siri should become. Different teams pursued conflicting goals, leading to wasted effort and stalled progress. This indecisiveness from the top created a frustrating environment where engineers struggled to move forward on key initiatives.

2. Apple's Privacy Dogma as a Double-Edged Sword

Apple's unwavering commitment to user privacy is one of its greatest marketing strengths, but it has proven to be a significant handicap in the AI race. While competitors like Google and OpenAI harness vast amounts of user data in the cloud to train their models, Apple insists on doing as much processing as possible on the device. This privacy-centric approach is commendable but makes it exponentially harder to build large-scale, powerful AI models that learn from real-world interactions. The strict privacy practices created technical hurdles and limited the data available to Giannandrea's teams, putting them at a fundamental disadvantage.

3. Conflicting Personalities and Team Silos

The report also highlighted clashes between key figures within the AI division. A combination of strong personalities and a siloed organizational structure—a long-standing characteristic of Apple—made collaboration difficult. Instead of working as a cohesive unit, teams often competed for resources and influence, further slowing down the development of a unified Siri experience.

The Gradual Dismantling of an AI Empire

While the retirement announcement in late 2025 was the final act, Apple had been systematically dismantling Giannandrea's authority for months. The company has not commented publicly on the internal issues, but its actions speak volumes. The restructuring began in earnest earlier in the year:

• March 2025: In a clear sign of lost confidence, Apple stripped Siri oversight from Giannandrea, effectively removing him from his most important responsibility.
• April 2025: The company followed up with a complete overhaul of the Siri management team, bringing in new leaders to steer the ship.
• April 2025: Giannandrea was also removed from his leadership role in Apple's nascent robotics division, further narrowing his scope of influence.

These moves show that his departure was not a sudden decision but the result of a deliberate, months-long process to restructure the AI division and hold leadership accountable for the failure to deliver on its promises.

A New Structure for a New Era of AI

With Giannandrea on his way out, Apple is not just swapping one leader for another; it's fundamentally reorganizing its AI efforts to be more integrated and efficient. The new structure splits Giannandrea's former responsibilities among three of Apple's most powerful executives.

Amar Subramanya and Craig Federighi: The core AI/ML teams will now fall under Amar Subramanya, who reports to Craig Federighi. Placing AI directly under the head of Software Engineering is a powerful statement. It suggests Apple wants AI to be woven into the very fabric of its operating systems from the ground up, rather than being a separate feature bolted on top. This could lead to faster innovation and more seamless user experiences.

Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue: Other key parts of the AI puzzle are being reallocated. Teams responsible for AI Infrastructure will now report to Sabih Khan, SVP of Operations. This move is about scale and reliability, treating AI infrastructure with the same operational rigor as Apple’s global supply chain. Meanwhile, the Search and Knowledge teams will move under Eddy Cue, the SVP of Internet Software and Services. This positions search and intelligence squarely within Apple's content ecosystem, which includes Apple Music, TV+, News, and Maps, suggesting a push for smarter, more personalized services.

What Does This Mean for the Future of Apple Intelligence?

This major shake-up is Apple’s attempt at a hard reset for its AI ambitions. The departure of John Giannandrea represents an acknowledgment that the previous strategy, despite its high-profile leader, was not working. The new, decentralized-yet-integrated structure aims to address the key points of failure: lack of clear direction, poor integration, and operational bottlenecks.

For consumers, the immediate future is one of patience. The promised Siri revolution is still at least a year away, if not more. However, the leadership changes offer a glimmer of hope. By bringing in a new AI head from a major competitor and embedding AI development more deeply within its core software and services divisions, Apple is laying the groundwork for a more focused and effective strategy.

The challenge remains immense. The gap between Siri and its competitors is wide, and the pace of innovation in the AI space is relentless. But with this decisive leadership overhaul, Apple has made it clear that it is not content to be an AI laggard. The next chapter for Siri and Apple Intelligence will be written by a new team with a new playbook, and the world will be watching to see if they can finally deliver on the promise of a truly smart assistant for everyone.

from MacRumors
-via DynaSage