New Delhi: Apple has recently announced that it has appointed Amar Subramanya as its new Vice President of AI, replacing long-time executive John Giannandrea, who will now continue as an adviser until his retirement next spring. Apple CEO Tim Cook has stated that, “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.” The company has also released a blog post in which it 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.”
Amar Subramanya graduated in electrical, electronics, and communications engineering from Bangalore University in 2001. He moved to 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 joining the company as a visiting researcher. 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 Vice President of Engineering in 2019. He headed engineering for Google’s Gemini Assistant. In July this year, he briefly joined Microsoft as a Corporate Vice President of AI.
After this 16-year stint at Google, Amar 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, knowledge and AI infrastructure. Under Giannandrea’s AI leadership, Apple has 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. Some reports also suggested that CEO Tim Cook had begun losing confidence in AI chief John Giannandrea’s ability to deliver these next-generation AI products on time.
