John Giannandrea Leaving Apple
Apple (Hacker News, MacRumors, The Register, NY Times, TechCrunch):
Apple today announced John Giannandrea, Apple’s senior vice president for Machine Learning and AI Strategy, is stepping down from his position and will serve as an advisor to the company before retiring in the spring of 2026. 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.
In fact, I’m surprised he wasn’t out before WWDC this past June.
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As for Subramanya, according to his LinkedIn profile, he was at Google for 16 years, and left to join Microsoft only five months ago. Either he didn’t like working at Microsoft, or Apple made him an offer he couldn’t refuse (or, perhaps, both).
When Apple hired Giannadrea from Google in 2018, the New York Times called it a “major coup”, given that Siri was “less effective than its counterparts at Google and Amazon”. The world changed a lot in the past six-and-a-half years, though: Siri is now also worse than a bunch of A.I. products. Of course, Giannadrea’s role at Apple was not limited to Siri. He spent time on the Project Titan autonomous car, which was cancelled early last year, before moving to generative A.I. projects. The first results of that effort were shown at WWDC last year; the most impressive features have yet to ship.
JG was seemingly too focused on research and development and not enough on shipping products (in Apple terms, he was perhaps good at his “Category 1”—AI research—and not so great at his “Category 3”—making that work available for others to successfully perform their Category 1).
Breaking up JG’s organization makes sense, then. (My understanding is it was a mess—apparently the admin he brought over with him from Google was running the team.) Subramanya keeps JG’s research and foundational AI portfolio (under Federighi’s SWE—Software Engineering), while I’ll guess that AI infrastructure, which wouldn’t fit well under SWE, shifts to Khan (Apple’s COO), and front-end and related services lands with Cue, who owns Services (like the App Store and App Store Connect). Fortunately, Cue’s and Federighi’s teams have a lot of experience working together to deliver products (Xcode Cloud or In App Purchase are but two examples), so I’m confident this bodes well for the future of Apple Intelligence.
Previously:
- Apple Succession Planning
- White Label Gemini on Private Cloud Compute
- Why Apple Still Hasn’t Cracked AI
- How Apple Fumbled Siri’s AI Makeover
- Apple Shifts Siri From Giannandrea to Rockwell
- Leaked Apple Siri Meeting
- Rotten
- Apple Delays “More Personalized Siri” Apple Intelligence Features
- Apple Hires John Giannandrea
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> Fortunately, Cue’s and Federighi’s teams have a lot of experience working together to deliver products (Xcode Cloud or In App Purchase are but two examples), so I’m confident this bodes well for the future of Apple Intelligence.
Xcode Cloud is still a thing in 2025?
"Fortunately, Cue’s and Federighi’s teams have a lot of experience working together to deliver products"
Do they, though? They are the ones who have been ultimately (aside from Cook) responsible for Siri for a decade. They let it become what it is. They've shipped bare minimum software updates and pushed services to the extreme.
CFed keeps getting more and more handed to him, seemingly because there's no one else.
