While competitors are building brands around AI agents and chatbots, Apple has consistently lacked a strong offensive, especially given its slow progress in generative AI. To turn the tide, Apple’s latest strategy involves restructuring its AI team, poaching senior executives from Microsoft, and reorganizing its organization after the retirement of its former AI head.

John Giannandrea, the senior vice president in charge of AI strategy who reported to CEO Tim Cook, was “retired.” Hailing from the UK, he believed AI should be infrastructure. His team therefore assisted in designing chips and integrating AI functionality into Apple’s operating system’s writing tools, notification categorization, photo editing, and other features, rather than presenting it as a chatbot.

Giannandrea emphasized a research-oriented culture, rare at Apple, which helped recruit many AI researchers with academic backgrounds. His team published influential AI papers, but their achievements in hardware and software products were limited. For example, Siri, despite being on the market for 14 years, can still only handle basic single queries. In contrast, competitors’ chatbots can engage in human-like conversations and answer complex questions.

Besides Giannandrea’s leadership style, there are deeper reasons for Apple’s lagging AI development. The Wall Street Journal analysis suggests that Apple’s inability to create leading AI products stems from the company’s emphasis on privacy, which restricts researchers’ access to data, coupled with a relatively small capital budget that limits its access to computing resources.

Due to a confluence of factors, Apple’s original plan to revamp Siri by 2024-2025 has been repeatedly delayed, now pushed back to 2026. American financial media outlet Quartz points out that the Siri relaunch was intended to demonstrate the impressive results of Giannandez’s team’s quiet efforts, but instead, it has become the focus of investor complaints, analyst reports, and a high-level reshuffle.

The person taking on this hot potato is Amar Subramanya from India, who will become Apple’s Vice President. Prior to this, he has over 20 years of experience, dedicating his education and career to machine learning and large-scale AI systems, applying his knowledge to some of Silicon Valley’s largest companies.

From 2009 to 2025, Subramanya worked at Google for 16 years, rising from research scientist to chief engineer, and then vice president of engineering, leading a team that connected machine learning research with large-scale consumer products. In July 2025, he was recruited by Microsoft as Vice President of AI, responsible for developing and driving the foundational models for Microsoft’s generative AI chatbot, Microsoft Copilot, and other products.

This recruitment of Subramania and the restructuring of the AI ​​team signifies a new era for Apple’s AI business. With a strong technical background and experience at both Microsoft and Google, he is considered capable of balancing the four principles of foundational models, research, productization, and implementation, making him a key figure in Apple’s relaunch and acceleration of AI.

However, the Wall Street Journal believes that whether Apple can paint an attractive AI roadmap for its customers and employees remains to be seen, as both groups have complained about Apple’s lack of direction in this technology, considered “the most decisive of the decade.” Whether Subramania’s arrival can reverse this trend is still uncertain.