Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman says the biggest turning point in Apple’s recent Apple AI strategy came from a major internal meeting among senior executives. That meeting reportedly led to a broad reshuffling of Apple’s AI organization and changed the company’s direction for the next several years.
Apple is expected to use WWDC 26, which begins in two days, to show iOS 27 and a new wave of AI features. If Gurman’s reporting is accurate, the event could also mark the end of a messy two-year stretch for Apple’s AI efforts.
According to Gurman, the AI industry was moving quickly in early 2025, while Apple was clearly falling behind rivals. Company executives decided to hold an urgent meeting near the software engineering department to figure out how to respond. Tim Cook did not attend in person; former COO Jeff Williams reportedly led the meeting instead.
During the discussion, Williams and other executives concluded that Apple Intelligence was in trouble and that the long-delayed Siri rebuild had become a serious problem. The group quickly recognized that Apple could face long-term consequences if it didn’t make a fast course correction.
The next question was how to fix it. At the time, Cook had reportedly lost confidence in John Giannandrea, Apple’s then-head of AI, even though Giannandrea was also present at the meeting.
That opened the door for Mike Rockwell, the executive behind Vision Pro, to offer to take over Apple’s AI and Siri reform work. Rockwell had strong internal credibility after launching Vision Pro, so the idea gained support from several people in the room.
Gurman also says former Apple hardware chief Dan Riccio had warned nearly a decade earlier that Apple needed a dedicated AI leader. Riccio even asked Rockwell at the time to draft a five-year plan for rebuilding Siri. Apple’s top leadership did not act on those suggestions then, and the proposed Siri rebuild never really got off the ground.
By 2025, though, the mood inside Apple had changed. Senior leaders reportedly agreed that the company needed new leadership for the project and that Rockwell should take charge of Siri.
Even after Rockwell won support from executives and Cook approved the Siri handoff in March 2025, the arrangement was not simple. Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, reportedly believed Rockwell should run Siri under Federighi’s organization rather than report directly to Cook.
Rockwell was said to be frustrated by that structure. He reportedly felt Federighi did not fully grasp how important AI had become, and he even considered walking away from the Siri project while hoping for a senior vice president promotion. After some internal back-and-forth, Rockwell ultimately accepted the role under Federighi.
Apple still needed someone to oversee AI model development. The company began a long search in 2025 and eventually selected Amar Subramanya as its second-ranking AI leader, also reporting to Federighi.
Talent changes alone were not enough to solve the problem. Rockwell began looking for outside help, and he eventually reached an agreement with Federighi and services chief Eddy Cue to work with Google.
Cook also became far more directly involved in Apple AI strategy after this crisis. Gurman says Cook personally reviewed Apple’s AI roadmap and delivered company-wide rallying messages, a different approach from his usual delegation-heavy management style. Faced with AI, he chose to supervise the work much more closely.
Cook reportedly told Federighi and other executives that they had to take AI seriously and make sure the effort succeeded. Federighi’s own view of AI has also changed sharply, with AI now seen as a core part of Apple’s operating-system roadmap for the next several years.
Looking back, that early-2025 meeting appears to have been a dividing line for Apple’s AI work. Whether the reset actually pays off should become clearer at WWDC 26.
