Tim Cook, the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to publicly come out as gay, will no longer serve as the head of Apple computing as of September 2026. Afterward, he’ll serve as Apple’s executive board chairman. The new CEO will be Johnny Ternus, a hardware engineer who has been with Apple for 25 years.

In a letter posted publicly on Monday, Cook called Ternus a “brilliant” thinker who has carefully overseen the development of the company’s most popular products, including iPhones, iPads, Macs, and wearables devices used by over 2.35 billion active users worldwide.

Cook expressed his gratitude at leading a company that has enabled and expanded the human capacity for creative connection and expression.

“For the past 15 years I’ve started just about every morning the same way. I open my email and I read notes I received the day before from Apple’s users all over the world,” he wrote.

“I feel a gratitude that I cannot put into words, that I somehow got to be the person on the other end of those emails, the leader of a company that ignites imaginations and enriches lives in such profound ways it defies description. What an honor and a privilege it has been,” he wrote.

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Cook became Apple CEO in 2011 after Steve Jobs stepped down. He maintained a much lower public profile than Jobs, working as the company’s capable but mild-mannered chief. Comparatively, Jobs styled his own reputation as Apple’s charismatic, visionary leader.

Cook publicly came out as gay in a 2014 personal essay, but he had lived an out life amongst family, friends, and colleagues before then.

His essay expressed pride in his sexuality, calling it “among the greatest gifts God has given me.” He hoped his openness would comfort those who feel alone or inspire others to insist on their equality. He said he felt compelled to use one of the world’s largest businesses to help others to “do something for the greater good.”

in his goodbye letter, Cook wrote, “This is not goodbye. But at this moment of transition, I wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you.”

“Not on behalf of the company … But simply on behalf of me. Tim. A person who grew up in a rural place in a different time and, for these magical moments, got to be the CEO of the greatest company in the world. Thank you for the confidence and kindness you’ve shown me. Thank you for saying hi to me on the street and in our stores.”

Under Cook’s leadership Apple achieved a market capitalization of $4 trillion. Its products are globally daily in media, medicine, business, government, and other daily life.

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