Another senior AI leader is leaving Apple

Apple just finished its annual iPhone showcase, but while the hardware was razor-thin, its AI bench is looking increasingly hollow.

Robby Walker, one of Apple's top artificial intelligence and search executives, is leaving the company next month, according to Bloomberg. Walker, who joined Apple back in 2013, was running the Siri division until earlier this year.

Executive musical chairs and a stalled search project

Walker's departure follows months of intense reshuffling inside Apple's AI ranks.

Earlier this year, control of Siri was shifted away from Walker over to software chief Craig Federighi. In April, Walker took charge of the Answers, Information and Knowledge group.

According to The Decoder, Walker was heading an ambitious internal initiative to build an AI-powered web search tool slated for 2026, aimed directly at taking on ChatGPT and Perplexity. Walker's exit puts a huge question mark over the future of that project.

This leadership shuffle has been brewing for a while. Bloomberg reported back in March that CEO Tim Cook had lost confidence in AI chief John Giannandrea's product execution, quietly handing responsibilities for Siri to Mike Rockwell, the vice president leading the Vision Products Group.

Meta keeps poaching Apple's best AI minds

Walker is just the latest in a string of top-tier AI departures hitting Cupertino, with Mark Zuckerberg playing the spoiler.

In July, Apple lost its head of AI models, Ruoming Pang, to Meta. Meta then followed up by hiring two of Pang's close research colleagues, Mark Lee and Tom Gunter, for its Superintelligence Labs group. Executive Frank Chu also decamped to Meta.

All of this comes as Apple scrambles to prove its AI chops. The rollout of Apple Intelligence and its ChatGPT integration has moved slowly, and the much-hyped conversational overhaul of Siri has been delayed into next year. At last week's iPhone launch, Apple had little to show to counter Google's Gemini-loaded flagships.

Why it matters

We think Walker's exit exposes a deep strategic rift inside Apple that goes beyond routine turnover.

Shifting Siri between three different executives in less than a year, while losing the director tasked with challenging Perplexity before the product even sees daylight, points to execution paralysis. Developing an in-house AI search engine is critical for Apple's post-Google contingency plans, but losing Walker midway through development threatens to derail that timeline.

For everyday users, the takeaway is clear: do not buy the latest hardware expecting a radically transformed Siri anytime soon. The smarter voice assistant is pushed to next year, and an Apple-native answer engine will not arrive until at least 2026. For now, Apple Intelligence remains a promise rather than a daily utility.

Across the industry, Meta is aggressively taking advantage of Apple's slow-footed approach, hoovering up top-tier research talent frustrated by corporate delays. Unless Apple can settle on a clear AI vision and keep its best researchers happy, the gap between Cupertino and the rest of Big Tech is only going to widen.