Apple has announced the appointment of Amar Subramanya as vice president of AI, reporting to Craig Federighi, while John Giannandrea, senior vice president for Machine Learning and AI Strategy, has stepped down from his role and has taken on an advisory position ahead of his retirement in spring 2026.
The company has said that Subramanya has been entrusted with leading Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI safety and evaluation. Meanwhile, the remaining parts of Giannandrea’s organisation have been shifted to Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue to align them more closely with their respective domains, marking a significant reorganisation within Apple’s AI structure.
Giannandrea, who has been with Apple since 2018, has played a key role in shaping the company’s AI and ML roadmap and has overseen teams responsible for Apple Foundation Models, Search and Knowledge, Machine Learning Research and AI Infrastructure. Subramanya has most recently served as corporate vice president of AI at Microsoft and has previously worked at Google for 16 years, where he has been head of engineering for Google’s Gemini Assistant.
“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. “AI has long been central to Apple’s strategy, and we are pleased to welcome Amar to Craig’s leadership team and to bring his extraordinary AI expertise to Apple. In addition to growing his leadership team and AI responsibilities with Amar’s joining, Craig has been instrumental in driving our AI efforts, including overseeing our work to bring a more personalized Siri to users next year.”
