Apple is preparing another leadership shakeup, this time for its secretive robotics team. Bloomberg reports that Apple is shifting its robotics team from AI chief John Giannandrea to John Ternus, its Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering.
This move comes just a month after Apple removed Siri from Giannandrea’s oversight after Tim Cook “lost confidence in the ability” of the former Google executive to “execute on product development.” Siri is now led by Mike Rockwell, the creator of Apple Vision Pro, who reports to software boss Craig Federighi.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple will move the robotics team to Ternus’s purview “later this month.” Ternus currently leads hardware engineering for almost all Apple’s products, including the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro. Ternus is also a leading candidate to eventually replace Tim Cook as Apple CEO.
The robotics team at Apple is working on multiple products, including a tabletop iPad-like device with a robotic arm that moves the display around. The team is led by Kevin Lynch, who also worked on the Apple Watch and Apple’s failed electric car project. In addition to the robotic iPad, the team is working on more advanced projects, such as a “mobile robot that can follow users around their homes.”
In addition to the robotics team led by Giannandrea, a separate team working on “robotics and smart home technologies” also exists inside Apple. That team, led by Brian Lynch and Matt Costello, was already under the purview of Ternus. By shifting Giananndrea’s robotics responsibilities to Ternus, both teams are now under a single leader.
The move also means that Ternus now has control over key AI teams, Bloomberg reports:
The relocation of Lynch’s unit is also notable because it gives Ternus control over key AI operating system and algorithms teams, groups not typically managed by the hardware engineering department. Ternus briefly oversaw the Vision Pro software unit — until Rockwell moved with that team to the software engineering organization. That coincided with the Siri management shift last month.
With this change, Giannandrea and his AI/ML group will have “more time to focus on underlying artificial intelligence technology.” Bloomberg says that Giannandrea hasn’t indicated he is leaving the company:
Giannandrea hasn’t given his team any indication that he is planning to leave soon, but the continued shift of responsibilities has raised the prospect that the company may be preparing for a world without the executive at the helm of its AI efforts. Eight years after combining Apple’s AI teams into a single group with the hire of Giannandrea, a breakup of the AI and ML team is looking more likely, the people said.
Read the full report at Bloomberg.
My favorite iPhone accessories:
Follow Chance: Threads, Bluesky, Instagram, and Mastodon.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
