November’s tech C-suite did the AI shuffle

Big month, big moves—let’s look at November in the tech C-suite.

An Apple shuffle redefines company’s approach to AI

Yes, this technically happened December 1, but we’re including it anyway. Apple announced a big shakeup in the company’s AI business, as SVP of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence John Giannandrea stepped down. Amar Subramanya will take over.

Apple’s AI efforts haven’t been as successful as its peers, CNBC reported, noting that the company’s Apple Intelligence platform has failed to gain traction among users. That’s due in part to less investment in the technology and Apple having its AI run on its own devices, rather than relying on the cloud to process workloads.

In leaving—he will serve as an advisor at the company until the spring—Giannandrea ends an almost eight-year stint at Apple. Before joining Apple, he spent comparable time at Google as SVP of engineering as well as stints as CTO at Metaweb Technologies and as chief technologist for Netscape, as well as other companies.

Subramanya was most recently CVP at Microsoft AI, where he served for around half a year before jumping to Apple. Prior to that, he spent 16 years at Google, ending his time there as VP of engineering for the company’s Gemini AI product.

OpenAI snags another competitor’s exec

The game of musical chairs played at the top levels of the country’s major tech companies continued as Intel CTO and AI chief Sachin Katti moved over to OpenAI, where he’ll lead the business’s compute infrastructure team.

Katti has extensive experience leading tech companies. He co-founded Kumu Networks, acting as CEO for more than three years, and later led Intel’s AI business. In between, he was a full-time professor of electrical engineering at Stanford.

OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman made the announcement on X, saying that Katti’s work in compute infrastructure “will power our AGI research and scale its applications.”

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan will take over Katti’s AI responsibilities.

From Boston Dynamics to Google DeepMind

Aaron Saunders joined Google DeepMind in November after a decades-long career with Boston Dynamics, most recently as CTO.

At DeepMind, Saunders will be VP of hardware engineering for robotics. His hire is seen by some as a sign of Google’s investment in robotic technology as the company continues to look for any advantage in a crowded tech market.

In a post on LinkedIn reflecting on nearly 22 years with Boston Dynamics, Saunders wrote that he joined DeepMind to integrate AI into the robotics field.

“My task will be to help supercharge this effort, working across an amazing ecosystem of partners and tackling the fundamental hardware problems that stand between today and realizing the full potential of AGI in the physical world,” Saunders wrote.

Larry Summers leaves OpenAI

Economist Larry Summers was removed from OpenAI’s board of directors in November following scrutiny over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the accused sex trafficker who died in 2019.

Summers had served on the board since November 2023. He joined after a protracted back-and-forth over the company’s leadership that also resulted in the reappointment of CEO Sam Altman. (Read our contemporaneous report for more.)

A famed Harvard economist, Summers served in the Clinton White House. His career wasn’t without controversy even before his association with Epstein became toxic; he once suggested women were biologically incapable of achieving the same levels of success in the STEM field as men.