Apple cuts 200+ jobs as it rebuilds Siri around a next‑gen AI assistant

Apple has laid off more than 200 employees, primarily in teams working on the Siri voice assistant and the Vision Pro spatial computing platform, according to several reports. While painful for those affected, the cuts are part of a broader restructuring to concentrate talent on a new, more capable AI assistant built on modern generative AI architectures.

Sources say the layoffs hit groups responsible for maintaining legacy Siri features and some hardware‑adjacent projects. Some staff were reassigned internally, but others were let go outright. Since around 2024, Apple has faced criticism that Siri lags behind AI assistants from competitors, and the company has reportedly been overhauling its underlying systems for years to catch up.

The restructuring signals a clearer prioritization of where Apple wants to invest its AI resources. With its deep strength in hardware, Apple is expected to lean heavily on privacy‑preserving design and on‑device inference – running powerful models directly on iPhones, Macs and headsets. The open question is when Apple will feel ready to unveil this next‑generation assistant and how aggressively it will be integrated across the company’s product line‑up.