Tim Cook has sent his final message to Apple employees as chief executive, closing a 15-year tenure that transformed the iPhone maker into one of the most valuable companies in history.
In the memo, delivered on Cook’s final day as CEO, he thanked employees for what he described as the work and culture that made Apple distinctive and expressed confidence in incoming chief executive John Ternus. Cook will remain at the company as executive chairman rather than leaving Apple entirely.
Apple first announced the transition in April, naming Ternus: its longtime hardware engineering chief, as CEO effective Sept. 1. Cook said at the time that Ternus had spent 25 years helping build Apple products and called him the right person to lead the company’s next phase.
Cook Leaves Apple With a $4.7 Trillion Legacy
The scale of Apple’s growth during Cook’s tenure is difficult to overstate.
Apple’s market capitalization is now approximately $4.67 trillion, with shares trading around $319.70 on Aug. 31. Cook took over from Steve Jobs in 2011, and Apple shares have risen by roughly 2,000% over his tenure.
The company also leaves Cook’s CEO era with unusually strong operating momentum.
Apple reported $109.4 billion in fiscal third-quarter revenue, up 16% year over year, while diluted earnings per share rose 29% to $2.02. The company said iPhone, Mac and Services all set June-quarter revenue records.
Cook’s tenure was defined less by a single new product equivalent to the iPhone and more by scaling Apple’s ecosystem. The company expanded into Apple Watch, AirPods, subscription services, payments and proprietary silicon while dramatically improving profitability and supply-chain efficiency.
Coinpaper previously examined the scale of that transformation when Apple’s valuation briefly overtook Nvidia at nearly $5 trillion.
Ternus Inherits Apple’s AI Problem
The handoff is deliberately orderly, but Ternus is not inheriting an easy job.
Apple remains one of the world’s most profitable companies, yet investor expectations are unusually high. Shares trade at roughly 33 times forward earnings, leaving little room for strategic disappointment.
Artificial intelligence is the most obvious pressure point.
Apple introduced an overhauled Siri and new Apple Intelligence features at WWDC26, but the company has faced persistent questions over whether it is moving quickly enough against rivals investing aggressively in generative AI.
That concern has already shaped the Apple stock outlook around the leadership change. Ternus’s hardware background may also signal a renewed emphasis on product execution after years in which investors increasingly focused on services and ecosystem monetization.
The timing makes the transition especially visible.
Apple is scheduled to hold its next major product event on Sept. 9, just eight days after Ternus formally becomes CEO. The event is expected to feature new iPhone hardware and will serve as his first major public product cycle at the top of the company.
He remains inside Apple as executive chairman, while Ternus takes responsibility for a company whose scale is now both its greatest strength and its biggest challenge.
Cook leaves behind a business with record revenue, a global installed base exceeding 2.5 billion active devices and a valuation approaching $5 trillion. Ternus now has to prove that Apple can turn that installed base into the next major phase of growth, especially in AI, where execution will matter more than continuity.
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