Apple’s Executive Exits Could Include Hardware Chief

The wave of executive departures hitting Apple recently may not yet have crested.

Johny Srouji, senior vice president of hardware technologies, recently informed CEO Tim Cook that he is thinking seriously about stepping down in the near future, Bloomberg News reported Saturday (Dec. 6), citing sources familiar with the matter.

The report added that Srouji, who leads Apple’s in-house chips effort, has told colleagues that he plans to join another company if he ultimately decides to leave.

As Bloomberg noted, this resignation — if it happens — would be the latest in a series of exits by key executives at the tech giant. Apple’s heads of artificial intelligence (AI) and interface both stepped down last week, along with its general counsel and head of governmental affairs.

This report came one day after a story by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) charting the departures of dozens of employees further down the org chart who had left Apple for OpenAI and Meta in recent months. This group of employees includes engineers and designers with expertise in areas such as audio, watch design and robotics.

Meanwhile, Apple’s board has reportedly begun preparations for Cook’s departure after 14 years heading the company. John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, is widely seen as Cook’s most likely replacement, according to a recent Financial Times report. However, there is no firm date yet for if or when the CEO might leave.

These moves are happening at a time when rivals are working to capture the market share held by Apple’s iPhone and other parts of the company’s ecosystem, and as  Apple is adjusting to the AI era, and new devices are being developed to capitalize on that technology.

PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster took a close look at this situation earlier this year, framing it as part of a larger series of obstacles 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.”