Tim Cook to Step Down as Apple CEO
- Apple announced that long-time CEO Tim Cook will step down, handing leadership to the company’s hardware head. - Cook, 65, will transfer CEO duties to John Ternus, Apple’s head of hardware engineering. - The leadership change reshapes Cupertino tech governance and investor expectations, and will be closely watched by employees and Wall Street. (patch.com)
Apple said Tim Cook will stop being chief executive on September 1, 2026, and hand the job to hardware chief John Ternus. (apple.com) Cook, 65, will become executive chairman of Apple’s board, while Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, will also join the board on the same date. The board approved the transition unanimously, and Arthur Levinson will move from non-executive chairman to lead independent director. (apple.com) Ternus has run the teams behind the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods, and Vision Pro, and he joined Apple’s product design group in 2001. Apple says he has been a vice president of hardware engineering since 2013 and now leads all hardware engineering across the company. (apple.com) Cook took over as Apple chief executive in August 2011 after serving as chief operating officer, and he stayed in the job for nearly 15 years. Apple’s market value was just under $350 billion when Cook took over and sits at about $4.01 trillion now, according to Bloomberg’s tally. (investor.apple.com, bloomberg.com) The handoff comes as Apple is trying to prove it can keep its hardware business strong while catching up in artificial intelligence. Apple delayed major Siri artificial intelligence upgrades into 2026, a setback that put more attention on its product roadmap ahead of this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference. (cnbc.com, apple.com) Apple is also still dealing with regulatory pressure in Europe over the App Store. In April 2025, the European Commission fined Apple €500 million after finding the company breached the Digital Markets Act’s anti-steering rules. (ec.europa.eu) Under Cook, Apple expanded far beyond the iPhone with services, wearables, and custom chips, while keeping a supply chain and retail operation that made it one of the world’s biggest consumer companies. Apple’s investor site lists an April 30, 2026 earnings call as the next major public checkpoint for management. (investor.apple.com, apple.com) Cook said leading Apple was “the greatest privilege” of his life, and Ternus said he was “humbled” to take the role after working under both Steve Jobs and Cook. The next test is no longer whether Apple planned for succession, but how Ternus handles his first product cycle as the person making the final call. (apple.com, bloomberg.com)
