According to Neowin, Apple has hired Amar Subramanya as its new Vice President of AI, poaching him from Microsoft just four months after he left Google. Subramanya spent over 16 years at Google, most recently as VP of Engineering for the Gemini team, before joining Microsoft as Corporate Vice President of AI in August 2025. Apple simultaneously announced that its current Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, John Giannandrea, will retire in the spring of 2026. Subramanya will report to Craig Federighi and lead teams for Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI Safety. His hiring is framed as a move to accelerate Apple’s AI innovation, an area where the company has publicly lagged behind rivals.
Musical chairs at the top
This is a wild game of executive musical chairs. Subramanya was at Google for 16 years. He leaves for Microsoft, publicly gushing about its “low-ego yet bursting with ambition” culture. And then, barely 120 days later, he’s out the door to Apple. That’s not a career move; it’s a sprint. It tells you the AI talent war has escalated from a bidding skirmish to full-on, no-holds-barred trench warfare. Companies aren’t just hiring for the long term anymore—they’re grabbing proven leaders to plug immediate, glaring holes in their strategies. Apple’s press release basically admits as much, saying Subramanya’s hire will “accelerate its AI efforts.” That’s corporate-speak for “we need help, and we need it yesterday.”
What this says about Apple
Here’s the thing: this hire is a massive, flashing neon sign that Apple knows it’s behind. They’ve watched Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft dominate the AI narrative for two years. Their Apple Intelligence features are a start, but they’re playing catch-up in the foundational model race. Bringing in someone who led engineering for Google’s Gemini and then got a top-tier look at Microsoft’s AI playbook? That’s the fastest way to get a crash course in what you’re missing. He’s not replacing Giannandrea directly, but he’s clearly being set up as the operational engine for AI delivery. The question is, can one person, no matter how experienced, change the trajectory of a company as large and deliberate as Apple?
And what about Microsoft?
This has to sting for Microsoft. They scored a huge win by pulling a key Gemini leader from Google. It was a PR coup and a talent raid in one. Now, that trophy hire is gone before he could even really get settled. What does that say about Microsoft’s internal AI structure or its ability to retain top talent it poaches? It also raises a practical issue: what projects was Subramanya leading in his short tenure? His sudden exit probably leaves a scramble behind him. In this hyper-competitive field, four months of leadership vacuum can feel like an eternity.
The bigger picture
Basically, we’re watching the consolidation of AI power into a tiny club of companies, and the players are just swapping the same few executives between them. It’s a closed loop. The expertise needed to run these billion-parameter model factories is so rare that the same names keep popping up. For Apple, this is a necessary, aggressive move. But hiring a star isn’t the same as building a cohesive, innovative culture. Apple’s strength has always been vertical integration and seamless hardware-software synergy. Can they adapt that famed approach to the breakneck, cloud-centric world of generative AI? Subramanya’s job is to figure that out. And given his recent track record, who’s to say he’ll still be there in a year to see it through?
