With a statement published this Monday, Apple closed the cycle of one of the longest and most profitable leaderships in recent corporate history. Tim Cook will step down as CEO on September 1, 2026. His successor already has a first and last name: John Ternus, senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, who has been with the company for 25 years and has overseen much of the hardware that made Apple what it is today.
Cook does not disappear: he will assume the position of govt chairman, with representation functions before regulators and governments around the world.
The succession was approved unanimously by the board of directors. Arthur Levinson, non-executive chairman for 15 years, will become a key independent director. Ternus will formally join the council on September 1.
Who takes command
Ternus is 50 years old and joined Apple in 2001 as a product engineer. He graduated in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and, before Apple, worked at a virtual reality startup where he worked as a mechanical engineer. He was named Vice President of Hardware Engineering in 2013 and promoted to Senior Vice President in 2021. Under his leadership, the MacBook Neo and iPhone Air, the ultra-thin variant of the iPhone 17 line, were developed, in addition to multiple generations of iPhone, iPad, Mac and AirPods.
In January 2026, Apple also assigned him supervision of the design team, a position that had historically been the direct responsibility of the CEO. Seen today, that movement was the clearest sign of what was being prepared.
Ternus noted in the statement that he worked under Steve Jobs and had Cook as a mentor, a way to enter the line of succession without proclaiming it. Cook, for his part, described him as someone with “the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator and the heart to lead with integrity.”
What Cook leaves
When he took over in August 2011, weeks after Jobs announced his resignation, Apple was worth about $350 billion. Today its capitalization exceeds 4 billion, a growth of more than 1,000%. Annual revenue went from 108,000 to more than 416,000 million in fiscal year 2025. The services division (iCloud, Apple Pay, Apple Tune, Apple TV) exceeded 100,000 million dollars annually. The installed rotten reached 2.5 billion active devices.
Perhaps the most profound mark of Cook’s tenure was increasing Apple’s operational capacity: he remade the global supply chain and took inventory turnover time from several months to five days. The share price multiplied about 20 times during his tenure, compared to six times for the S&P 500 in the same period. Shares fell more than 2% in after-hours trading after the announcement.
The fundamental challenge that John Ternus will face
Ternus takes office at a time when Apple is accumulating its greatest lag in artificial intelligence: it delayed the relaunch of Siri with AI and ended up integrating Google’s Gemini into the iPhone, generating dependence on a direct competitor. John Giannandrea, the head of AI, was one of several executives who left the company in the previous months. The Ternus profile, built on hardware and physical product, does not directly coincide with what that terrain demands.
Added to all this is an episode that the announcement cannot erase: on March 17, just 34 days ago, Cook denied the rumors about his departure on Right Morning The US. Apple today listed the process as long-term planning. Those two versions don’t necessarily contradict each other, but they reveal precisely how the company manages information when something important is afoot.
Keep reading:
• Tim Cook and the possible end of a technology at Apple
• Apple regains first place in global sales thanks to the iPhone 17
• Apple will invest $100 billion to make more devices in the US.
