Who Is Amar Subramanya? Indian-Origin Researcher Taking Reigns of Apple’s AI Division

Amar Subramanya, an artificial intelligence (AI) researcher, has joined Apple as the company's Vice President of AI. The Cupertino-based tech giant confirmed his appointment, highlighting that the researcher will replace John Giannandrea, Apple's current Senior Vice President for Machine Learning and AI Strategy. Both are significant developments for the iPhone maker, given that the company is currently struggling to keep up with rivals in the AI space, with the most notable being multiple delays to the promised AI-based advanced Siri features.

Who Is Amar Subramanya?

In a newsroom post, the tech giant formally announced Subramanya as the new VP of AI, highlighting that he will directly report to Craig Federighi, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering at Apple. The change of office for the AI researcher comes just six months after he joined Microsoft as the Corporate Vice President of AI.

Subramanya, the Indian-origin researcher, competed his graduation in Electrical, Electronics, and Communications Engineering (BE) from the Bangalore University in 2001, according to his LinkedIn profile. He then worked short stints for IBM and Microsoft, before receiving his Ph.D  from the University of Washington. The researcher's longest stint so far was at Google, where he joined as the Staff Research Scientist in 2009 and rose to the position of the VP of Engineering in 2019. He left the company for Microsoft in July.

Apple mentioned that at Google, he was heading the Gemini Assistant before his departure. Subramnaya has deep expertise in both AI and machine learning (ML) research and integrating the research into products and features. The tech giant mentioned that this expertise will be important for the company's ongoing innovation and future Apple Intelligence features.

“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. In addition to growing his leadership team and AI responsibilities with Amar's joining, Craig has been instrumental in driving our AI efforts, including overseeing our work to bring a more personalized Siri to users next year,” said Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.

On the other hand, the departing SVP of AI, Giannandrea, joined Apple in 2018 and headed various projects in the company's AI and ML strategy. Some of the projects he's responsible for include Apple Foundation Models, Search and Knowledge, Machine Learning Research, and AI Infrastructure.