Apple AI and Search Executive Robby Walker to Leave Company

Apple’s Robby Walker, one of the iPhone maker’s most senior artificial intelligence executives, is leaving the company, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Walker, who’s one of a few direct reports to AI chief John Giannandrea, was in charge of Siri until earlier this year — before oversight of the voice assistant was shifted to software chief Craig Federighi. That move came after promised changes to the feature were publicly postponed, marking a high-profile setback.

After leaving the Siri role, Walker became one of the top Apple executives working on a new AI-powered web search system to compete with Perplexity and ChatGPT. It’s scheduled to debut next year.

He’s currently the senior director in charge of the company’s Answers, Information and Knowledge team. Walker is planning to leave Apple next month, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the move hasn’t been announced.

A spokesperson for Cupertino, California-based Apple declined to comment.

Apple’s AI struggles have weighed on its share price this year, with the stock declining almost 7% in 2025. On Friday, it gained 1.7% to $233.93 as of 2:57 p.m. in New York.

Though Walker’s duties and staff were dramatically reduced over the past several months, he had still been an influential part of Apple’s AI strategy. His exit also adds to an exodus of executives and engineers from that division.

Ruoming Pang, who led Apple’s AI models team, left for Meta Platforms Inc. and many of his engineers and researchers followed. Last month, Frank Chu, another senior executive working on search services, departed for the social networking giant.

In an internal meeting in March, Walker pushed back against criticism about Siri’s feature delays, while acknowledging they were embarrassing.

“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 said. “And we were being jumped on, not for the amazing swimming that we did, but the fact that we didn’t get to the destination.”