The Tim Cook chapter at Apple is coming to an end.
Apple announced on Monday that Cook is stepping down as CEO, effective September 1, 2026. Cook will remain at Apple as executive chairman.
John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, who was widely viewed as Cook’s likely successor, will be taking the helm as chief executive. Apple also named executive Johny Srouji as chief hardware officer as part of its transition plan.
Cook has worked at Apple for nearly three decades, first joining Apple in 1998 as senior vice president of worldwide operations. Apple cofounder Steve Jobs named him COO in 2005, and Cook was instrumental in building out the iPhone company’s massive supply chain while in the role. He became Apple’s CEO in 2011, taking over for Jobs.
Cook called his tenure as CEO “the greatest privilege of my life” in Apple’s news release.
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“I love Apple with all of my being, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with a team of such ingenious, innovative, creative, and deeply caring people who have been unwavering in their dedication to enriching the lives of our customers and creating the best products and services in the world,” Cook said.
Apple reached new heights under Cook
While he faced the unenviable task of taking over for a man many viewed as a once-in-a-generation product visionary, Apple’s growth under Cook was undeniable.
Under his guidance, Apple became the world’s first trillion-dollar publicly traded company in 2018. Today, it has a market cap of over $4 trillion.
And while Apple has yet to release a new product that has surpassed the iPhone’s high-water mark, Cook oversaw the company’s launch of multiple products that are now household names, such as the Apple Watch and AirPods. He scaled up Apple’s business in China, which has become one of the company’s top markets.
Cook was responsible for growing Apple’s services business — which includes the App Store, iCloud, and Apple TV, among other digital services — into a $100 billion-plus juggernaut with the kind of high margins the company is famous for.
In 2014, Cook also became the first openly gay CEO of a Fortune 500 company, writing in a personal essay that his sexuality was “among the greatest gifts God has given me.”
“It’s also given me the skin of a rhinoceros, which comes in handy when you’re the CEO of Apple,” he wrote at the time.
He’s also overseen some stumbles, such as the poorly received Apple Maps rollout in 2012 (which has since been vastly improved), the prohibitively expensive Apple Vision Pro headset (a niche product for now), and the delayed AI overhaul of its voice assistant, Siri.
The company also spent billions and multiple years developing a self-driving electric car, in an internal initiative called “Project Titan,” which Cook later pulled the plug on.
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Cook’s stepping down as CEO comes as Apple works to catch up to rivals in the AI race, which Apple was late to meaningfully invest in.
Ternus will take over as CEO in the fall, around the time of the iPhone 18 launch, which is expected to come bundled with the newly overhauled AI Siri.
