The Long Goodbye: John Giannandrea Reaches His Final Week at Apple
John Giannandrea, Apple Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy [TechCrunch, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons]
Toggle Dark Mode
John Giannandrea, Apple’s erstwhile head of AI strategy, is officially leaving the building this week, ending an eight-year reign over the company’s AI ambitions that began back in 2018 when he was hired away from his position as Google’s AI chief to ultimately become Apple’s senior vice president of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Strategy later that same year.
Giannandrea officially stepped down from his senior VP role in December, with Apple announcing that he would finish his tenure in an advisory capacity before formally retiring in the spring.
“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,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, in the company’s press release, while also revealing a reshuffling of the org chart to move AI down a level, placing it under the purview of software engineering chief Craig Federighi. “AI has long been central to Apple’s strategy, and we are pleased to welcome Amar [Subramanya] to Craig’s leadership team and to bring his extraordinary AI expertise to Apple.”
While we’ve known the clock was ticking on Giannandrea’s final departure, it wasn’t clear precisely when the former senior VP would be leaving. However, Mark Gurman reports that Giannandrea’s time as an advisor to Apple is now coming to an end this week — a timeline that makes perfect sense in retrospect, as April 15 marks the vesting date for his final round of stock awards. This is a common practice among executives that are planning to leave a company, and is known in the industry as “resting and vesting.”
Gurman reports that Giannandrea’s plans for his Apple afterlife are to “join some company boards and do advising work in the startup world.”
While Apple has attempted to put a positive spin on Giannandrea’s departure, many believe the company is simply allowing him to make a graceful exit. Giannandrea’s “retirement” wasn’t likely to have been entirely of his own volition, as it came on the heels of major structural changes to Apple’s AI projects amidst reports that suggested he’d lost the confidence of CEO Tim Cook after failing to deliver on key AI initiatives.
Giannandrea’s arrival in 2018 spurred optimistic reports that significant changes to Siri were coming. However, Siri’s failures to adapt to the age of AI in the years since have become a punchline, following delays to several (well, nearly all) of the Siri features that were announced for iOS 18 back in June 2024. Apple got quite a ribbing on the press for its ads showing off the features, then was embarrassed further when the company kept kicking the Siri AI can down the road on a seemingly regular basis. Now it is hoped that the promised features will make an appearance in iOS 27, which will be unveiled at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June.
In addition to Apple Intelligence development, Giannandrea also took over the reins for the ill-fated Apple Car project, when it became more about the software than hardware. That project came to an end in early 2024. Although the failure can’t be completely laid on the shoulders of Giannandrea and his team, it added to what has seemingly become a long list of failures to produce the results that Apple expected.
The Apple Intelligence failures have led to Apple’s shaking up the organization of its AI teams. When Apple announced Giannandrea’s departure in December, it also announced the hiring of Amar Subramanya to serve as its VP of AI, reporting to Craig Federighi. Subramanya had served 16 years at Google, as well as a five month period at Microsoft.
Apple CEO Tim Cook stripped control of the Siri team away from Giannandrea in March 2025, as it was reported that Cook had “lost confidence” in his ability to “execute on product development.” Siri was taken over by Apple exec Mike Rockwell, within Federighi’s software engineering division. Not long after, a more secretive robotics project in the AI/ML division shifted to hardware engineering chief John Ternus, while some of Giannandrea’s other responsibilities moved to services chief Eddy Cue, and new chief operating officer Sabih Khan.
