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Former Apple Veteran Joins Google After Brief Stint at Tesla

By
Jonathan Vanian
Jonathan Vanian
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By
Jonathan Vanian
Jonathan Vanian
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August 14, 2017, 7:07 PM ET
Key Speakers At Dmexco Digital Marketing Conference
The Google Inc. logo hangs illuminated over the company's exhibition stand at the Dmexco digital marketing conference in Cologne, Germany, on Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2016. Dmexco is a two-day global business and digital economy innovation platform, attracting the industry's most important personalities and corporate decision-makers. Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesKrisztian Bocsi—Bloomberg/Getty Images

A former Apple software executive has taken a job with Google.

Chris Lattner, who helped Apple (AAPL) create its SWIFT programming language, said Monday via Twitter that he is joining the search giant. The SWIFT language is Apple’s preferred primary coding language for outside app developers.

Lattner made headlines earlier this year when he left his position as Apple’s senior director of developer tools department to join electric automobile maker Tesla as its vice president of autopilot software. But just six months later, Lattner left Tesla (TSLA) with the Elon Musk-led auto company saying in June that he “wasn’t the right fit,” and Lattner tweeting that he was “interested to hear about interesting roles for a seasoned engineering leader!”

I'm super excited to join Google Brain next week: AI can't democratize itself (yet?) so I'll help make it more accessible to everyone!

— Chris Lattner (@clattner_llvm) August 14, 2017

Google (GOOG) apparently followed up on Lattner’s tweet, and he will become a member of the Google Brain research team, which specializes in much of the search giant’s artificial intelligence related projects.

Google is pushing its TensorFlow as the preferred software tool kit that developers can use for their own deep learning coding projects. In May, Google debuted the second version of its custom TPU microchip that is intended to work with the Tensorflow software and crunch data more efficiently than conventional silicon chips.

About the Author
By Jonathan Vanian
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Jonathan Vanian is a former Fortune reporter. He covered business technology, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, data privacy, and other topics.

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