Apple CEO Tim Cook Steps Down September 1, Ceding 4 Trillion-Dollar Company After 15 Years

Tim Cook formally announced at WWDC on June 8 that he will step down as CEO on September 1 and transition to executive chairman, ending his 15-year tenure that expanded Apple's market value from approximately $350 billion to $4 trillion. During his leadership, Apple's annual revenue grew from $108.25 billion to $416.16 billion, and he oversaw development of new product lines including Apple Watch, AirPods, and Vision Pro.

Sucession John Ternus, 51, a senior vice president of hardware engineering with 25 years at Apple, will take over. Ternus has led development of MacBook, iMac, and iPhone 17. According to reports, Apple plans to pay Google approximately $1 billion annually to integrate Gemini into iOS 27, which will allow users to select from multiple AI engines including Google Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, and OpenAI's ChatGPT.