Former AI boss John Giannandrea officially leaving Apple this week after ‘resting and vesting’

Chance Miller | Apr 13 2026 - 5:24 am PT

John Giannandrea’s time at Apple is officially coming to an end this week. Giannandrea joined Apple in 2018 after eight years at Google to head the company’s machine learning and AI strategy.

In December of last year, however, Apple announced that Giannandrea was stepping down from his position and would serve as an advisor to the company before fully departing in spring of 2026.

In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman reports that Giannandrea’s time as an advisor to Apple wraps up this week. The timing correlates to Apple’s April 15 vesting date — meaning Giannandrea remained on Apple’s payroll until now to let his next round of stock awards vest. This is something colloquially referred to as “resting and vesting” in the industry.

Gurman reports that Giannandrea’s plan post-Apple is to “join some company boards and do advising work in the startup world.”

Apple has dramatically shaken up its AI teams and organization in the fallout of the Apple Intelligence debut. Alongside the announcement of Giannandrea’s departure in December, Apple also announced it had hired Amar Subramanya to serve as its VP of AI, reporting to Craig Federighi. Subramanya spent 16 years at Google and five months at Microsoft before joining Apple.

Giannandrea had control of the Siri team stripped in March 2025 after Tim Cook reportedly “lost confidence” in his ability to “execute on product development.” As it stands right now, Siri is led by Mike Rockwell inside Apple, while Giannandrea’s other responsibilities have been taken over by a combination of Craig Federighi, Eddy Cue, and Sabih Khan.

Apple is set to announce major new AI and Siri features as part of iOS 27 at WWDC in just two months. These will mark the first major features since Federighi took charge and Apple signed its deal with Google to use Gemini models to power new AI features.

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