Apple’s new AI chief has his work cut out for him

By now you’ve probably heard that Apple’s AI chief John Giannandrea is stepping down from his current role before his retirement early next year. Much has been written about Apple’s lagging in the AI arena over the past several years, as well as how much of that lies at Giannandrea’s own feet. But what I found particularly interesting is not Giannandrea’s departure—for which the writing has seemed to be on the wall for some months now—but the details of his replacement:

Apple also announced that renowned AI researcher Amar Subramanya has joined Apple as vice president of AI, reporting to Craig Federighi. Subramanya will be leading critical areas, including Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI Safety and Evaluation. The balance of Giannandrea’s organization will shift to Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue to align closer with similar organizations.

Back in 2018, Giannandrea joined Apple from Google, where he was the head of not only Google’s artificial intelligence, but also of search. At the time, it was widely seen as a coup for Apple, even though the company’s outside hires don’t always have the best track record.1

Subramanya is himself a former Google employee, where he headed up engineering for Gemini, before he moved to Microsoft in July of this year—less than six months ago. I have a hard time believing he’d been courted by Apple for any length of time, else why take the job at Microsoft? Maybe, as John Gruber points out, he really didn’t like Microsoft, or Apple offered him an amazing deal.

Still, the most salient fact would seem to be that Giannandrea’s replacement is from outside of Apple, which strongly suggests that there wasn’t anybody inside of Apple considered the right fit for the role. That’s not surprising, for two reasons: first, that Apple simply isn’t the hot AI company that all the AI experts want to work at. And second—and relatedly—the company has been hemorrhaging its AI team to other companies, especially Meta, over the past several months.

It’s also worth noting that Subramanya’s remit is narrower than his predecessor’s: he’s focusing on “Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI Safety and Evaluation” whereas Giannandrea’s current responsibilities include “Apple Foundation Models, Search and Knowledge, Machine Learning Research, and AI Infrastructure.” Apple says other parts of the team will be moved to newly installed chief operating officer Sabih Khan (presumably the infrastructure part, if that involves data centers and the like) and services chief Eddy Cue (presumably Search and Knowledge). He’ll also report to Craig Federighi, rather than Tim Cook directly, as Giannandrea did.

All of this reorganization comes just months before the company is said to be finally launching several Apple Intelligence features that it promised back in 2024. I can’t say whether Subramanya taking the reins bodes well or ill for the future of Apple Intelligence, but it’s clear that he has work cut out for him—the first step in which is probably rebuilding the company’s AI team.

If you want to take a trip down memory lane for some spectacular examples, look up John Browett and Mark Papermaster. ↩