Amar Subramanya joins Apple as Vice President of AI

Apple announced that AI researcher Amar Subramanya has joined as Vice President of AI, reporting to Craig Federighi. This announcement comes as Senior Vice President for Machine Learning and AI Strategy, John Giannandrea, steps down from his role and will serve as an advisor until retiring in the spring of 2026. The company also 

Subramanya is expected to lead areas including Apple Foundation Models, machine learning research, and AI safety and evaluation. The company said the remaining parts of Giannandrea’s organisation will shift under Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue to align with related teams.

Giannandrea, who joined Apple in 2018, has overseen the company’s AI and machine learning strategy, including teams working on foundation models, search, ML research, and AI infrastructure.

Subramanya previously served as corporate vice president of AI at Microsoft and spent more than a decade at Google, where he led engineering for the Gemini Assistant.

Speaking on the developments, Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said, “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. 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 personalised Siri to users next year.”

Apple said the leadership changes are intended to support the company’s next phase of AI development.