Apple’s failed AI chief, John Giannandrea, will finally exit the company after several years at the helm, after the company announced in a December 2025 press release that the executive would “retire” this spring.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
It’s been a long goodbye for John Giannandrea, the former artificial intelligence boss known as JG. His days were numbered ever since March 2025, when Cook and other Apple executives made the decision to dramatically reduce his role overseeing AI. The move stemmed from the disappointing launch of Apple Intelligence and ongoing delays to the upgrade of the Siri assistant — as well as the broader sense that the company got ambushed by generative AI. At the time, his oversight of Siri, robotics and other AI teams was yanked.
At the end of last year, Apple made the exit official, saying that Giannandrea would be retiring in 2026. His remaining responsibilities — Apple’s foundation models, AI testing and various other functions — were split up across software chief Craig Federighi, services head Eddy Cue and operating chief Sabih Khan. Since then, JG has been “advising,” or what is better known as “resting and vesting.” That means hanging out on the payroll until his stock vests.
The next Apple vesting date is April 15, and I am told JG’s final days at Apple are indeed this coming week…
Giannandrea came to Apple from Google, and he will likely be remembered as another of Cook’s outside hires that failed to click. But here’s the reality: I don’t think the issue is that Cook doesn’t know how to hire from the outside. The truth is that the top of Apple is run like a small family business with few decision-makers. And if you’re not in the inner circle — which is nearly impossible to crack — you’re simply not empowered enough to drive real change at the company.
MacDailyNews Take: Cook doesn’t know how to hire from the outside precisely because, for some fifteen years now, he has failed to create the proper onboarding and integration conditions necessary for outside hires to succeed.
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-$3.28 so far today. Normal.
Tim it’s finally out ” The truth is that the top of Apple is run like a small family business with few decision-makers. And if you’re not in the inner circle – which is nearly impossible to crack
— you’re simply not empowered enough to drive real change at the company.”
So if you don’t understand innovation don’t care about it can’t control it put all the R& D money into a car, share buy backs Movies and TV – try to destroy one of the most innovative tech consumer companies leverage the portfolio and hire people less knowledgable like you – TIm – keep them employed even when it’s obvious they’re out of their depth -and there you have the current Apple top management who are this year basking in Steve Jobs glory Apple in its 50 th year – when the current team having spent billions of dollars on R & D have failed to produce any innovative products and been unable to leverage complicated issues such as Siri etc WELL DONE!!!!
It’s not even got to the ridiculous stage where you are unable to properly leverage the high end machines stopping production of the High End Mac Pro and cancelling orders for the top Mac studios and Mac minis while introducing a mass market machine at the bottom end well done
What would Steve Jobs think? Rumour is the man called it with a straight bat lucky he cant be here to tell you what he thinks but then again if he was you’d still be in the supply chain deparment.