Succession Race Is On as Apple Prepares for Cook’s Departure

Apple is reportedly preparing to name a new leader to replace longtime CEO Tim Cook.

Cook, who has led Apple for more than 14 years, could step down as soon as next year, the Financial Times (FT) reported Friday (Nov. 14), citing sources familiar with the matter.

These sources told FT Apple’s board and senior executives have stepped up preparations for Cook to turn things over to a new chief executive. John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, is widely viewed as Cook’s most likely replacement, although no decisions have been made, these sources said.

PYMNTS has contacted Apple for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.

Sources close to the company say this is a long-planned transition, and unrelated to Apple’s current performance, with Apple expected to enjoy massive sales of the iPhone as the year winds down. The report added that the company is unlikely to name a new CEO before it reports earnings in late January.

Announcing a new CEO early in 2026 would give a new leadership team time to find its footing ahead of major company events like Apple’s developer conference in June and its iPhone launch in September, the sources said.

Cook, Apple’s former operations chief, became CEO in 2011, just before the death of co-founder Steve Jobs. Under Cook’s leadership, FT noted, Apple’s market capitalization has ballooned from $350 billion in 2011 to the $4 trillion milestone it reached last month.

The report said that while Apple’s shares are trading near record highs, the company still lags rivals like Google, Microsoft and Nvidia, whose valuations have soared thanks to Wall Street’s enthusiasm about artificial intelligence (AI).

PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster wrote about this situation last year, framing it as part of a larger series of headaches facing Apple.

“Maybe investors didn’t take Gen AI, and more recently, agent-driven workflows, as seriously before. Was Gen AI really all that transformative? Would people and businesses really care? The market response is yes, yes and without a doubt, yes,” Webster wrote.

“They and Apple are finding that AI is a technological opportunity that rewards speed. Apple hasn’t left the starting blocks. Its competitors are accelerating, iterating and launching new Gen AI tools and agents across products and platforms. Apple is betting it can catch up by wiring OpenAI into Siri. A year from now.”