Apple is set to lose one of its most senior artificial intelligence executives. Robby Walker, who has played a central role in shaping Siri and Apple’s broader AI strategy, is preparing to leave the company at the end of October, according to Bloomberg.
Walker served as senior director for Siri until earlier this year, when oversight of the voice assistant shifted from AI chief John Giannandrea to software chief Craig Federighi. The move followed delays to Apple’s promised Siri upgrade, a setback that drew attention inside and outside the company.
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From Siri to AI Search
After moving off the Siri team, Walker took charge of Apple’s Answers, Information and Knowledge group, which has been developing an AI-powered web search tool. The project, designed to compete with services like ChatGPT and Perplexity, is scheduled to debut in 2026. Bloomberg reports that Walker’s number of deputies was reduced after he left Siri, signaling a diminished role inside Apple even as he worked on Answers.
Mark Gurman of Bloomberg also notes that Walker’s exit adds to a growing wave of departures from Apple’s AI division. Ruoming Pang, who led Apple’s AI models team, left for Meta earlier this year, taking several engineers and researchers with him. Frank Chu, another senior executive on the search side, also recently departed for Meta.
Walker drew attention in March 2025 for a team meeting in which he compared Siri’s struggles to an unfinished attempt at a record-setting swim. “We swam hundreds of miles — we set a Guinness Book for World Records for swimming distance — but we still didn’t swim to Hawaii,” he told staff, acknowledging the delays while trying to rally engineers.
According to Bloomberg, Apple continues to plan a major Siri relaunch as soon as spring 2026. The company is weighing whether to rely more heavily on Google’s Gemini model to power parts of the system, even as it works on its own models in-house. Apple already uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT to supply general world knowledge for Apple Intelligence features.
Apple declined to comment on Walker’s planned departure.
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