--- title: "Apple's AI Reset: New Bench, a Custom Gemini Siri and a Pivot to Glasses" date: 2026-11-05 category: Companies & Stack site: NeuroAI canonical: https://neuroai.site/a/na-corp-apple-siri-reorg-ondevice language: en --- # Apple's AI Reset: New Bench, a Custom Gemini Siri and a Pivot to Glasses > Apple rebuilds its AI leadership under Craig Federighi, plans a revamped Siri powered partly by a custom Google Gemini model, and shifts hardware focus toward smart glasses. The company that promised technology you can trust has been running late to its own future. Behind the polished showrooms, a quieter drama has been unfolding: a veteran executive heading for the exit, a rewritten assistant, and a hardware bet quietly re-cut. What looked like stumbles is starting to look like a deliberate reset. ## The leadership change that set it in motion In early December 2025, Apple announced that John Giannandrea — its head of machine learning and AI strategy since 2018, recruited from Google — would step down and retire in the spring of 2026, serving as an advisor in the interim. Taking over the operational core is Amar Subramanya, a researcher who spent 16 years at Google, where he led engineering for the Gemini model, before a brief stint as a Microsoft AI executive. Subramanya's mandate is unusually specific for Apple: he leads Apple Foundation Models, machine learning research, and AI safety and evaluation — and he reports not to CEO Tim Cook, but to software chief Craig Federighi. That reporting line is the signal. AI at Apple is no longer a standalone empire; it is being folded into the operating system group that actually ships products. Cook said Federighi has been instrumental in driving Apple's AI efforts, including the work to bring a more personalized Siri to users. Other teams once under Giannandrea were redistributed under COO Sabih Khan and services chief Eddy Cue. The backdrop matters too. A more personalized, assistant-grade Siri was originally promised for 2025, then delayed to 2026 — Apple admitted in March of that year that it was "taking longer than we thought." Bloomberg reported that Cook had lost confidence in Giannandrea's ability to execute on product development, and leadership of Siri had already shifted to other executives before the formal announcement. ## A Siri rebuilt on two legs The rebuilt Siri is expected to arrive in 2026, constructed on a new underlying architecture rather than bolted onto the old one. Its design reflects a two-legged stance: - **On-device models** handle latency-sensitive, privacy-sensitive tasks locally, keeping data on the phone and responses fast. - **A custom version of Google's Gemini** powers some of the new Siri features, according to Bloomberg reporting — a striking concession from a company that has long insisted on building its own foundations. The Gemini arrangement is pragmatic, not ideological. Training frontier-scale models from scratch takes years and billions; licensing a partner's model, customized and constrained to run within Apple's privacy framework, buys time. It follows the pattern Apple set by integrating ChatGPT into Siri in 2024. The bet is that users will judge the experience — speed, reliability, privacy — rather than the supplier of the underlying weights. Apple has also said since August 2025 that it is "significantly increasing" what it spends on AI, even though its infrastructure outlays remain far below those of Microsoft, Google or Meta, because its strategy deliberately favors running intelligence on the device rather than in giant cloud data centers. ## Where the people went The reset also reshuffled headcount. In November 2025, Bloomberg reported Apple eliminated more than 200 roles: roughly 100 in the Vision Pro organization, including largely shutting down its gaming team and shrinking immersive video production, and about 100 across Siri and the Intelligent Systems Experience group, which builds the software's smarter features. Apple confirmed the realignment in a statement, saying it would create new roles while a limited number of existing ones were affected. The Vision Pro cuts tell their own story. The headset, launched in early 2024 at $3,699, never found mass adoption, and producing premium immersive video — episodes costing millions of dollars — made little sense for a small user base. Apple insists the Vision Pro line and visionOS continue, but the near-term hardware priority has pivoted toward lighter smart glasses, with a possible new Vision Pro model not expected until late 2028 at the earliest, according to Bloomberg. Glasses are the natural home for an assistant-first future: cameras and microphones that feed Siri context all day, without a computer strapped to the face. ## The strategy underneath Read together, the moves form a coherent argument. Apple is conceding that it cannot — or should not — build every model itself, while doubling down on the one asset no rival can copy: distribution and trust. Hundreds of millions of devices, a privacy promise baked into silicon and marketing, and an assistant that acts inside apps rather than merely chatting. The risk is equally clear. Every year Siri leans on Google, Apple trains a generation of users that its own intelligence is second-rate — and it deepens its dependence on the very company it once outbuilt. Apple's shares rose 16% in 2025 yet lagged other megacaps precisely because investors doubt the company can convert hardware loyalty into a credible AI position. This reset is its answer, and 2026 will show whether the answer arrives on time. ## Key takeaways - Apple's AI leadership has been rebuilt around Amar Subramanya reporting to Craig Federighi, folding AI into the product-shipping organization. - The 2026 Siri combines on-device models with a custom Google Gemini powering select features, prioritizing speed and privacy over model purity. - More than 200 roles were cut across Vision Pro and Siri-related teams, as hardware priorities shift toward smart glasses. - The strategy trades model independence for time, betting that distribution and privacy trust outweigh foundation-model bragging rights. ## Honest limitations Most reporting on internal dynamics — Tim Cook's confidence, product timelines, the glasses roadmap — comes from Bloomberg and other media sources citing anonymous insiders; Apple has not published dates beyond broad 2026 commitments. The scope of the Gemini deal (which features, which regions, what revenue terms) is undisclosed. And a delayed personalized Siri has already slipped once; a second slip would damage credibility more than the first. ## What readers can do now - If you depend on Siri for daily workflows, wait for hands-on reviews of the 2026 release before assuming parity with competing assistants; delays have been the norm. - Developers building with Apple Intelligence APIs should watch how App Intents and on-device model access evolve — the Federighi reorganization suggests deeper OS integration is coming. - Anyone evaluating smart glasses purchases can reasonably wait: Apple's entry appears at least a year or more away, and first-generation hardware in this category is historically compromised. --- Published by NeuroAI (https://neuroai.site/) — https://neuroai.site/a/na-corp-apple-siri-reorg-ondevice Free to quote with attribution and a link to the original.