SRI International
In December 2007, SRI launched a spin-off company, Siri Inc., which Apple acquired in April 2010. In October 2011, Apple announced the Siri personal assistant as an integrated feature of the Apple iPhone 4S. Siri's technology was born from SRI's work on the DARPA-funded CALO project, described by SRI as the largest artificial intelligence project ever launched. Siri was co-founded in December 2007 by Dag Kittlaus (CEO), Adam Cheyer (vice president, engineering), and Tom Gruber (CTO/vice president, design), together with Norman Winarsky (vice president of SRI Ventures). Investors included Menlo Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures.
Eddy Cue
Cue joined Apple in 1989, and was instrumental in creating the Apple online store in 1998, the iTunes Store in 2003 and the App Store in 2008. In his early years at Apple, he was a manager of software engineering and customer support teams. In 1999, he convinced Apple to work with Akamai Technologies Inc. on new streaming functions for its QuickTime video software. He also played a key role in developing Apple's iLife suite of applications, namely iBooks, the iAd advertising service, and Apple's App Store of more than 700,000 applications. Cue is widely known at Apple for turning around its failed products, such as the MobileMe data syncing service as well as iCloud in 2011, which now has more than a quarter billion users. Likewise, Cue is famous for advising Jobs to consider creating a smaller version of the iPad based on his own experience with the product. While Jobs was originally against the idea, Tim Cook eventually agreed with the concept upon becoming CEO after Jobs' death.