John Ternus, senior vice president of hardware engineering at Apple, during the company’s event in New York on March 4, 2026.
Adam Gray | Bloomberg | Getty Images
an apple said Monday that John Ternus is succeeding Tim Cook as CEO, with Cook assuming the role of executive chairman on Sept. 1.
Ternus, senior vice president of hardware engineering, will join Apple’s board of directors when he becomes chief. Apple’s non-executive chairman Arthur Levinson will become the iPhone maker’s leading independent director at the time.
“Cook will continue in his role as CEO over the summer as he works closely with Ternus on a smooth transition,” Apple said in a press release. The company revealed that the board was appointed on Friday.
It’s Apple’s first CEO change since Cook, now 65, succeeded Steve Jobs at the helm in 2011, shortly before Jobs’ death. Ternus will be the eighth CEO of Apple.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to be CEO of Apple and I am trusted to lead such an amazing company,” Cook said in a statement. “I’ve loved Apple for the rest of my life, and I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with a team of smart, creative, creative, and deeply caring people who have been unwavering in their commitment to enriching our customers’ lives and creating the best products and services in the world.”
Apple also said that Johny Srouji will be chief hardware officer, taking over from Ternus in an expanded role. Srouji, most recently the company’s senior vice president of hardware technologies, will also lead hardware engineering.
Apple’s market cap has increased more than 20 times on Cook’s watch, closing Monday at $4 trillion. Cook took home $74.6 million in total compensation last year, including $3 million in base salary and millions more in stock awards, according to recent regulatory filings. Forbes estimates his net worth at around $3 billion.
However, with Cook out, Apple is facing a number of challenges, including a complex supply chain, international tensions, Trump administration tariffs and memory crunch coupled with growing demand for AI chips.
Ternus, 50, was Apple’s hardware manager and has worked at Apple for nearly half his life, joining just four years after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in mechanical engineering. He is widely considered to be next in line, with recent profiles in the New York Times and Bloomberg. His portfolio has included overseeing the hardware engineering teams behind the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods and Vision Pro.
Ternus came to Apple in 2001 after four years as a systems engineer at Virtual Research Systems. At Apple, he worked in the product design team, and in 2013 became the vice president of hardware engineering.
Revitalizing the supply chain
During his nearly 15-year tenure, Cook oversaw Apple’s leap into wearable technology, with the release of the Apple Watch, AirPods and the virtual reality headset Vision Pro, which has struggled to gain market acceptance since its release in 2024.
Revenue nearly quadrupled under Cook, rising to more than $400 billion in the most recent fiscal year. Cook is well known in Silicon Valley as an operations expert, revamping Apple’s supply chain after joining in 1998 as senior vice president of global sales and operations. When he arrived, Apple was close to bankruptcy.
Cook became one of Jobs’ most trusted managers and was promoted to CEO in 2005. Before joining Apple, Cook cut his teeth in the technology industry spending 12 years working at Apple. IBMhelping the company make computers. He also spent time at former PC maker Compaq as vice president of business operations. Cook graduated from Auburn University in 1982 and received an MBA from Duke University in 1988.
Apple CEO Tim Cook and Jalen Brunson, a basketball player for the New York Knicks, on the first day of in-store sales of the latest Apple products at Apple’s Fifth Avenue store in New York, September 19, 2025.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
For Ternus, perhaps the most critical aspect of his new job will be to take the company deeper into artificial intelligence, where it has lagged behind many of its peers.
While the iPhone 17 performed well, Apple faced criticism from investors and experts for a perceived lack of cutting-edge AI technology. That criticism grew after Apple last year delayed development of its Siri voice assistant. In December, Apple revamped its AI leadership, replacing its former boss with a Google veteran.
The company said it will launch an updated version of Siri this year based on Google Gemini AI model.
Ever since product designer Jony Ive left Apple in 2019, the company has been working without its esteemed chief of staff to make its flagship iPhone appealing to the masses.
Ive has joined OpenAI, which in May 2025 will acquire the design guru startup in an all-equity deal worth about $6.4 billion.
In recent years, Cook has worked as a government official to promote Apple’s interests, meeting with foreign and domestic leaders. Initially, he pushed for increased internet privacy protection around the world. In 2016, he clashed with the US government over whether Apple should help unlock an encrypted iPhone used by a gunman in San Bernardino, California. Cook said doing so would threaten users’ privacy, and the FBI eventually found a different way to unlock the device.
Lately, much of Cook’s public lobbying has focused on President Donald Trump, who has threatened and lifted tariffs on imports from China and other Asian countries where Apple does big business.
In August, Cook visited the White House, appearing with Trump, to announce the announcement that Apple will spend 600 billion dollars in the US over the next five years.
At the August meeting, Trump, who once referred to Cook as “Tim Apple,” read a list of company responsibilities next to Cook and said, “I love that you’re doing this.”
Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, told CNBC’s “Fast Money” that the timing of Cook’s exit was surprising.
“The idea is he’s going to stay another year,” Ives said. “You know, you’ve already commented on it about staying.”
Cook used an appearance on “Good Morning America” last month to shut down growing speculation about his future at the company, telling viewers that talk of retirement was nothing more than a rumor.
Asked about reports that he was preparing to retire, Cook told ABC, “No, I haven’t said that. I haven’t said that. I love what I do deeply. Twenty-eight years ago, I joined Apple, and I’ve loved it every day since.”
– CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this report.
Correction: A previous version of this story had Ternus’ age wrong.
WATCH: Apple executives Johnny Srouji and John Ternus on their growing chip business.
