Apple’s Secret Robotics Unit Shifts from AI to Hardware
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Although Apple never succeeded in pulling off the mythic “Apple Car,” several reports suggest that the research, development, and engineering expertise it acquired from Project Titan isn’t going entirely to waste. With a full self-driving car no longer on the roadmap, Apple has reportedly pivoted to personal robotics.
Not long after insiders reported on the cancellation of the Apple Car in early 2024, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that in-home robotic devices would be Apple’s next moonshot project. “Engineers at Apple have been exploring a mobile robot that can follow users around their homes,” Gurman reported. However, he added that Apple plans to start a bit smaller, with “an advanced table-top home device that uses robotics to move a display around.”
If these reports are accurate, that initial entry will likely take the form of an advanced home hub — something that will follow a more modest iPad-like hub that’s expected to arrive later this year or early next. Nevertheless, that’s expected to be a first step into a much larger world of Apple-powered personal robots.
Much like the Apple Car, which became an artificial intelligence project in its waning years, Apple’s personal robotics have been under the leadership of the senior VP John Giannandrea, who heads up Apple’s Machine Learning and AI Strategy division. Project Titan spent its first several years in a cloistered hardware engineering division and presumably shifted to AI to perfect the self-driving aspects (which never happened).
However, now it seems that personal robotics is moving in the opposite direction, shifting to hardware engineering. According to Gurman, it will be placed under the leadership of John Ternus, who heads up that division.
Apple plans to relocate the robotics team from John Giannandrea’s AI organization to the hardware division later this month, according to people with knowledge of the move. That will place it under Senior Vice President John Ternus, who oversees hardware engineering, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the change isn’t public.
Mark Gurman
There’s no insight into which of Ternus’ lieutenants will be leading Apple’s robotics ambitions or if it will still be headed up by Kevin Lynch, the well-known Apple Watch VP who was reassigned to the Apple Car team in 2021. However, it’s a move that seems to make sense on the surface. Hardware is arguably where robotics belongs, but it’s unclear if it’s simply a logical shift or if the move was prompted by Giannandrea’s failure to deliver the Siri Apple Intelligence improvements the company promised for iOS 18.
Siri was handed over to Giannandrea in late 2018, shortly after the former Google senior executive joined Apple to head up its new AI division. By early 2019, Apple’s newly minted senior VP was shuffling Siri team members around to refocus the voice assistant on long-term research. The news made everyone optimistic about Siri’s future, but not much has changed in the intervening six years. If anything, Apple Intelligence has made Siri worse.
Earlier this year, Apple found itself embroiled in a minor scandal, at least among Apple fans, when it officially delayed the more personalized Siri improvements it had promised at its 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). While Apple would never admit this publicly, Apple analysts reflected on the lack of any hands-on demos of the feature, concluding it was likely vaporware, and several inside sources revealed that the company “barely had a functional prototype” when it unveiled the new Siri at WWDC. In other words, what Apple showed last June was nothing more than a concept video.
It wasn’t long after these revelations that news broke that Apple was reassigning Siri to its software engineering department, under the senior leadership of senior VP Craig Federighi, with the project being directly headed up by Mike Rockwell — the person responsible for taking the Apple Vision Pro from concept to market. Rockwell also quickly brought in a few other heavy hitters from his Vision Pro team, a “dream team” with a proven track record of delivering results.
Giannandrea’s failure to make Siri ready for prime time has reportedly shaken Tim Cook’s confidence in his ability “to execute on product development,” Gurman reported earlier this year. It’s also reportedly held back Apple’s first home hub, which isn’t a robotics project, but was expected to be the precursor for the “table top robot.”
Personal robotics may have been in Giannandrea’s division simply because that’s where it was left sitting when the Apple Car project was wound down. However, it’s also not the only team within Apple working on robotics. Gurman notes that there’s already a hardware engineering team working on robotics in Ternus’ division under the direct leadership of executives Matt Costello and Brian Lynch (no relation to Kevin, as far as we know), who also handle smart home technologies.
Merging the AI robotics into the same division that handles hardware robotics seems reasonable, but Gurman adds that it’s “also notable because it gives Ternus control over key AI operating system and algorithms teams, groups not typically managed by the hardware engineering department.”
That takes another area of responsibility away from Giannandrea, but it also frees him up to do the things that he may be best at. Sources have said that when Giannandrea was heading up AI at Google, he was viewed as far more of a theoretician or a “professor.” His expertise clearly doesn’t lie in bringing products to market, but he seemingly has a strong foundation in machine learning research.
Someone still has to build the underlying models that power Apple Intelligence, Siri, and other machine learning and AI initiatives, and Giannandrea’s group will reportedly focus nearly all of its time on that now, without the distraction of turning them into tangible products.
Nevertheless, it remains an open question how long Apple’s Machine Learning and AI Strategy division will continue to exist. “Eight years after combining Apple’s AI teams into a single group with the hire of Giannandrea, a breakup of the AI and ML team is looking more likely,” Gurman’s sources said.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
