Man who once headed Apple’s Siri development team heads to Microsoft

Bill Stasior, who once headed Apple’s Siri development team, has left Apple to be one of Microsoft’s vice presidents of technology, reporting to Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott, per The Information. At Microsoft, he’ll lead an artificial intelligence group, the article adds.

In February, it was reported that Stasior, who was lured from Amazon in 2012 to lead Siri after two of the personal digital assistant’s creators left Apple, was no longer heading the voice assistant group. He was previously attached to Amazon’s A9 search arm. Stasior came to Apple in 2012 to oversee Siri following the departure of Siri co-founders Adam Cheyer and Dag Kittlaus. 

According to The Information, the February change was part of an effort by John Giannandrea, Apple’s senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy, “to put more of his own stamp on the group responsible for Apple’s voice assistant.” The article said that Giannandrea’s team is now focusing on long-term research versus the short-term incremental updates Siri has been seeing for several years.

In July 2018, it was announced that Giannandrea has taken over leadership of Siri, which was previously overseen by software engineering chief Craig Federighi.