Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple’s CEO on September 1, 2026, handing the keys to a company worth roughly $4 trillion to John Ternus, the man who has quietly shaped Apple’s hardware for a quarter century. Cook announced the transition on April 20, calling Ternus “a visionary” and expressing full confidence in his successor’s ability to lead.
Cook will move into the role of executive chairman of the board.
The man behind the machines
Ternus joined Apple in 2001, back when the iPod was the company’s most exciting product and the iPhone was still a gleam in Steve Jobs’s eye. He rose to senior vice president of hardware engineering in 2021, a role that put him in charge of the physical objects that generate the bulk of Apple’s revenue.
His fingerprints are on multiple generations of the iPhone, iPad, AirPods, and Apple Watch. He also played a central role in the transition from Intel processors to Apple’s own silicon chips in Macs.
