Siri Co-Founder Leaves Apple

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One of the main highlights of the recently-released Apple 4S is Siri, the intelligent and witty speech recognition engine that lets the phone act as a personal assistant. One of Siri’s co-creators has just left Apple, and might be off to doing more big things.

Apple acquired Siri in April 2010, in its familiar fashion of acquiring startups and small companies for their technology. Along with this acquisition was an acqui-hire setup, in which Siri’s developers and engineers were also absorbed into Apple. Before that, Siri has been in existence since 2007, where co-founder Dag Kittlaus was CEO until Apple’s acquisition. The startup had been providing the Siri app as a premium download for iOS users, and actually promised a version for BlackBerry and Android — but development on these was cancelled when Apple bought the company.

Sources cited by AllThingsD say that Kittlaus is leaving Apple under amicable terms, citing family reasons (Kittlaus’ family is in Chicago, while Apple is headquartered in Cupertino, CA). Founders of startups that have been acquired by bigger companies are often known to leave soon after their major product is launched, and Kittlaus is no different, having reportedly planned his departure for some time now.

A serial entrepreneur, Kittlaus had worked for Motorola and the Stanford Research Institute before co-founding Siri. He is said to be interested in “brainstorming new entrepreneurial ideas.” With a hit product now popular among iPhone users, will Kittlaus be able to replicate his success with Siri in new ventures?