Apple has replaced its head of AI development. The new manager worked at Google and Microsoft

Apple has announced that the head of development for its proprietary artificial intelligence, John Giannadrea, is leaving the company. He will step down as vice president of machine learning and AI strategy, but will remain an advisor to the company until his retirement in spring 2026.

The new VP of AI will be researcher Amar Subramanya, who spent 16 years at Google (where he led the development of the Gemini AI assistant, among other things) and left the company in June 2025 to become Microsoft's VP of AI.

At Apple, Subramanya will report to Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering. Subramagna will lead the development of Apple's proprietary AI models, machine learning research, and AI security. The rest of Giannadrea's responsibilities will go to other top Apple executives, including COO Sabih Khan and services chief Eddy Cue, Bloomberg added.

Giannadrea has worked at Apple since 2018 and "played a key role in the company's AI and machine learning strategy," Apple said in a statement. The top executive joined the company from Google and answered directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Bloomberg noted.

Meanwhile, Apple's AI team under Giannandrea's leadership has lagged behind other US IT giants: it launched its Apple Intelligence AI only two years after OpenAI's ChatGPT, and still its developments are rated below average, Bloomberg writes. An expected update to its Siri voice assistant, which is supposed to gain new capabilities with artificial intelligence, Apple has delayed until at least spring 2026, the agency's sources said. "The real reason for the problem is that Apple doesn't know what its AI strategy is," Seaport Research analyst Jay Goldberg told MarketWatch in late November.

Apple has taken a different approach to AI development: it's utilizing partnerships with other companies while maintaining discipline in capital spending, MarketWatch noted. Other IT giants developing their AI, including Alphabet (Google), Meta and Microsoft, spend tens of billions of dollars each quarter, and in Meta's case, the pace of spending has begun to worry investors.

Apple's AI strategy, for which Apple was scolded, has suddenly turned out to be an advantage for the iPhone maker, Bloomberg wrote in November. Investors are increasingly questioning whether the huge investments by OpenAI, Meta and Microsoft in AI development are justified, leading to high volatility in their shares. Apple has become a "safe haven" for investors: in the conditions of risk-aversion, such qualities of Apple as stability and predictability have again become in demand among market participants, the agency noted.

For Apple stock, its lagging AI performance was a negative factor that made the stock one of the worst performers in the Dow Jones Blue Chip Index in the first half of 2025. The stock's turnaround was helped by strong sales of the iPhone 17 lineup. Investor interest raised Apple's market capitalization above $4 trillion for the first time. In trading on December 1, Apple shares once again updated the record - $283.1 at the close. They are now worth 13% more than they were at the beginning of 2025.

Apple shares have a total of 50 recommendations from analysts, and the most popular one is "buy" (23 Buy ratings and eight Overweight ratings), MarketWatch shows. Another 15 analysts advise "hold" the stock (15 Hold ratings), while four advise "sell" (two Underweight and two Sell). The average target price of $284.54 is about the same as the current price.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor