Amar Subramanya has been appointed as Apple's new vice president of AI, replacing long-time executive John Giannandrea, who will continue as an adviser until his retirement next spring.
"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," Apple CEO Tim Cook said.
"His deep expertise in both AI and ML research and in integrating that research into products and features will be important to Apple's ongoing innovation and future Apple Intelligence features," the company said in its blog post.
Who is Amar Subramanya?
Subramanya graduated in electrical, electronics, and communications engineering from Bangalore University in 2001. He joined IBM as a software engineer.
In 2005, he pursued a PhD at the University of Washington and interned at Microsoft for a few months before working as a visiting researcher at the company.
Following his doctoral studies, he joined Google in Mountain View, California, as a staff research scientist. After eight years, he was promoted to principal engineer and then to VP of Engineering in 2019. He headed engineering for Google's Gemini Assistant. In July this year, he briefly moved to Microsoft as Corporate Vice President (CVP) of AI.
After his 16-year stint at Google, Subramanya has now joined Apple as CVP, reporting to Apple's software chief Craig Federighi, who oversees key areas, including foundation models, machine-learning research, search and knowledge and AI infrastructure.
Under Giannandrea's AI leadership, Apple faced criticism for lagging behind rivals in generative AI adoption. Competitors such as Samsung have been quicker to integrate AI features into their smartphones.
Earlier this year, Apple announced that major artificial intelligence upgrades for its voice assistant Siri would be delayed until 2026. Reports stated that CEO Tim Cook had begun losing confidence in AI chief John Giannandrea's ability to deliver these next-generation AI products on time.
