- William Stasior, the former head of Apple Siri, is joining Microsoft’s artificial intelligence division. Stasior will be reporting to Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott.
William Stasior — the former head of Apple’s Siri division — is now joining Microsoft’s artificial intelligence division as discovered by Aaron Tilley at The Information. Stasior is going to be reporting to Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott.
What may have influenced Stasior’s decision to leave Apple may have been the hiring of John Giannandrea last year. Giannandrea had previously worked at Google as an SVP of Engineering where he spent eight years leading the Machine Intelligence, Research, and Search teams.
Once Giannandrea started focusing more on Siri, he was promoted to an SVP position in December and started reporting directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook. And Tilley pointed out that the promotion led to Stasior spending less day-to-day time working on Siri.
Before Stasior worked closely on Siri, former iOS software head Scott Forstall was in charge of the digital assistant. After Forstall departed from Apple, Siri was passed to Eddy Cue and then Craig Federighi.
Does this mean that Stasior will be working on Microsoft Cortana? Nope. Stasior is reportedly going to be heading up an AI group as a Corporate Vice President of Technology and will oversee a number of broader technologies.
