Apple Revamps AI Leadership Amid Siri Delays

Apple moved Monday to reset its artificial intelligence (AI) leadership, announcing that longtime machine learning chief John Giannandrea will step down and that Amar Subramanya will become vice president of AI. The shake-up comes as Apple races to shore up its Apple Intelligence roadmap and Siri’s AI makeover after a year of delays, glitches and senior departures that underscored how far it still trails leading AI rivals.

Apple said Giannandrea will shift into an advisory role before retiring in spring 2026. Subramanya will report to software chief Craig Federighi and oversee Apple Foundation Models, machine learning research and AI safety and evaluation, while the rest of Giannandrea’s organization moves under operations head Sabih Khan and services leader Eddy Cue.

Subramanya is a former Microsoft AI leader and longtime Google engineer who helped build the Gemini Assistant. Apple said his track record turning research into products will be central to future Apple Intelligence capabilities and a more personalized Siri expected next year.

“AI has long been central to Apple’s strategy, and we are pleased to welcome Amar to Craig’s leadership team,” Tim Cook said in the announcement.

The reshuffle underscores how urgently Apple is rebuilding its AI stack as generative AI becomes the operating system for consumer engagement, from shopping to payments and digital banking.

PYMNTS coverage over the past 18 months has cataloged the missteps this new team must fix. Apple delayed key Apple Intelligence features for iOS and iPadOS to avoid shipping unstable code. Early releases drew criticism for inaccurate AI-generated news alerts and message summaries, prompting Apple to pull the feature and sparking media warnings about the risk to information integrity.

Engineering troubles have also slowed a next-generation Siri that is supposed to anchor Apple Intelligence and power new commerce and retail experiences, with reports of bugs, delays and internal reshuffles to fix the assistant. Most recently, PYMNTS reported that Apple is nearing a $1 billion-a-year deal to tap Google’s more powerful model to upgrade Siri — a stopgap while it races to close its capability gap in-house.

Taken together, those story lines make today’s elevation of Subramanya — and Federighi’s broader remit over Apple’s foundation models — a high-stakes bet that Apple can turn AI from a PR problem into a competitive weapon across its devices, services and payments ecosystem.

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