Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down after nearly 15 years, to be succeeded by hardware engineering chief John Ternus in September

Tim Cook, 65, announced he will step down as Apple's CEO in September after nearly 15 years leading the company, moving into an executive chairman role while John Ternus, the 50-year-old head of Apple's hardware engineering who joined the company in 2001, takes over as the eighth CEO in Apple's history. During Cook's tenure, Apple's annual profit quadrupled to more than $110B and its market value grew more than tenfold to $4 trillion, though the company has faced criticism for staying on the sidelines of the AI race while the rest of the industry committed hundreds of billions to AI development. Ternus inherits a company navigating tariff uncertainty, a looming antitrust trial, geopolitical tensions with China where roughly 80% of iPhones are manufactured, and questions about whether Apple can create a new industry-defining product category without a visionary at the helm.