Apple’s top artificial intelligence executive has resigned and plans to retire in 2026, the company announced Monday.
John Gianandrea has been working at Apple since 2018, and his official title was Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy.
He will be replaced by Amar Subramanya, who came to Apple after a brief stint as corporate vice president of AI at Microsoft and more than a decade at Google.
Mr. Subramanya will not report directly to Mr. Cook like Mr. Gianandrea, but will report directly to Craig Federighi, one of CEO Tim Cook’s deputies.
“AI has long been central to Apple’s strategy, and we are pleased to welcome Amar to Craig’s leadership team and bring his extraordinary AI expertise to Apple,” Cook said Monday.
The sudden move at a company known for careful succession planning highlights Apple’s challenge to compete with top AI developers such as Google, ChatGPT owner OpenAI, Meta and Microsoft.
Earlier this year, Apple delayed the release of an upgraded version of Siri with AI-powered features. At the time, the company said that developing the new version would “take longer than expected.”
The company said it plans to introduce new features “next year,” but provided no further details.
“We’re on track to release it next year, as we’ve shared in the past,” Cook said during the company’s quarterly earnings call in late October.
“With Apple Intelligence, we’re introducing dozens of new features that are powerful, intuitive, private and deeply integrated into people’s daily lives,” Cook said in an Oct. 30 conference call.
The company is currently targeting the release of an upgraded Siri for spring 2026, Bloomberg News recently reported.
Apple’s iOS and macOS currently integrate with ChatGPT, but their functionality is somewhat limited.
In recent weeks, Apple has reportedly been close to a deal to integrate with Google’s Gemini and AI models from Perplexity and Anthropic.
Apple’s stock price is also feeling the impact of what some perceive as the company’s AI services being lagging.
Apple stock has returned 13% this year, outperforming Amazon and Microsoft. But Oracle’s stock price soared 20%, Nvidia 34% and Google parent Alphabet 65%.
Still, Apple is the world’s second-largest publicly traded company after Nvidia, with a market capitalization of $4.2 trillion.
Overall, the S&P 500 index is up almost 16% this year.
