Apple says Tim Cook to become executive chairman, John Ternus next CEO

Apple said Monday that CEO Tim Cook will become executive chairman of the company's board of directors, while John Ternus, Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering, will become the company's next CEO effective Sept. 1, 2026.

The company said the leadership transition was unanimously approved by its board of directors and followed a long-term succession planning process. Cook will remain CEO through the summer and work closely with Ternus to ensure a smooth handover, according to Apple.

In a statement released by the company, Cook said it had been "the greatest privilege" of his life to be Apple's CEO, and described Ternus as "without question the right person to lead Apple into the future." Ternus said he was "profoundly grateful" for the opportunity to carry Apple's mission forward.

Cook joined Apple in 1998 and became CEO in 2011. Apple said that under his leadership, the company's market capitalization rose from about 350 billion U.S. dollars to 4 trillion dollars, while annual revenue increased from 108 billion dollars in fiscal 2011 to more than 416 billion dollars in fiscal 2025.

Ternus joined Apple's product design team in 2001, became vice president of hardware engineering in 2013, and joined the executive team in 2021 as senior vice president of hardware engineering, according to the company.

Following the announcement, Liz Miller, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, said the leadership changes represent a fresh signal particularly regarding how the company approaches the rapidly evolving AI landscape. "I definitely think it will be a new signal to Wall Street. So I think that's very accurate. But it may also be an indicator that holding off on major spend or trying to figure out which way the market was going to go when it came to AI was actually a fairly smart bet. We've seen massive spend and massive CapEx loss actually for a lot of organizations that went and raced into an AI future that they were not ready to go into. So I think that now we're going to have to see the new leadership move very quickly, come up with what that vision is, and give us a very clear indication of exactly where Apple is going to play in both the infrastructure, the data, and the AI conversation," said Miller in an interview with the China Global Television Network on Monday.

Oil prices surged on Monday as investors remain concerned over the uncertain situation in the Middle East.

The hikes come as a fragile two-week ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. is due to end on Wednesday, while a possible second round of negotiations were thrown into doubt after the U.S. seized an Iranian-flagged cargo vessel in the Strait of Hormuz.

West Texas Intermediate crude for May delivery surged 6.87 percent to settle at 89.61 U.S. dollars per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude for June delivery gained 5.64 percent to settle at 95.48 dollars per barrel on the London ICE Futures Exchange.

The Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping corridor accounting for around 20 percent of global oil flows, has effectively been closed to oil tanker transit since the outbreak of conflict in the Middle East at the end of February.