Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Apple Tim Cook opens the first Apple store in India's Mumbai

Apple CEO Tim Cook waves to people during the opening of the first Apple Inc. flagship store in Mumbai, India, on April 18, 2023 (Getty Images)

Tim Cook to step down as Apple CEO, John Ternus to replace him

Ternus was considered the front-runner for the job. During Cook’s tenure, he oversaw Apple stock gains of 1,933%, nearly quadrupling the S&P 500.

Rani Molla

4/20/26 4:45PM

Apple CEO Tim Cook will step down in September, the company has announced. John Ternus, senior vice president of hardware, will take the helm September 1. Ternus was long considered the front-runner for the role, but September is earlier than many had expected.

“The transition, which was approved unanimously by the Board of Directors, follows a thoughtful, long-term succession planning process,” the company said in a statement.

Cook will become executive chairman, while Apple executive Johny Srouji will take the expanded role of chief hardware officer.

During Cook’s tenure as CEO, Apple’s stock soared 1,933%, nearly quadrupling the 504% return of the S&P 500 over that same time frame.

“Apple is making a major transition on its AI strategy and longtime CEO and legendary Cook leaving now is a surprise,” wrote Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, who says that investors will likely have a “mixed” reaction to this leadership change. “While there were rumors of Cook leaving as CEO, investors will for now have more questions than answers around the timing and what this means for the broader Apple strategy.”

Ives had picked Apple as one of his top 5 AI stocks for 2026 despite its “invisible AI strategy.”

Shares of the iPhone maker fell as much as 2% in postmarket trading, but pared more than half of those losses by 5:41 p.m. ET.

Previously the Financial Times had reported that Cook could leave his post as early as 2026, though Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman called that timeline “unlikely.”

Cook, 65, has led the iPhone maker for nearly 15 years, taking over from cofounder and CEO Steve Jobs in 2011. The Apple Watch, the company’s first major new product after the Jobs era, launched under Cook and became one of his biggest successes. He helped shift the device toward health and fitness and scale it into a mass-market business.

Before that, he served as Apple’s COO. Often described as a supply chain genius, Cook is responsible for much of Apple’s operational efficiency and its ability to scale production and distribution globally.

Jon Keegan10h

FT: Meta considering “tens of billions” in new capital to fund AI

Just days after Google announced a monster $85 billion upsized equity raise, the extremely profitable Meta is seeking to sell “tens of billions of dollars” in stock, according to a new report from the Financial Times.

Meta is planning on spending between $125 billion and $145 billion on AI capital expenditure this year alone.

Shares dropped more than 5% on the news.

Meta weighs big equity raising after blockbuster Google deal

Rani Molla

15h

Meta is supercharging its subscription businesses

The free-app giant never really cared about recurring revenue. Now, it’s launching paid plans for all sorts of stuff.

Jon Keegan16h

FT: Anthropic staff helping the NSA use Mythos for offensive cyberattacks

Anthropic’s Mythos AI model was deemed too dangerous to release to the public, with the company citing its ability to orchestrate novel cyberattacks.

And that’s just what the National Security Agency is doing, with the help of Anthropic staff embedded at the agency, according to a report from the Financial Times.

Only a small number of companies and US allies have been given access to the advanced model, which means America’s adversaries have not had the chance to shore up their defenses against the AI model’s new offensive capabilities.

The arrangement is especially unusual as the Pentagon has deemed Anthropic’s AI a national security supply chain risk — effectively blacklisting it for defense work — in response to the company’s refusal to allow its technology to be used for any legal application, which could include autonomous killing or mass surveillance. Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the determination.

US National Security Agency using Anthropic’s Mythos for cyber attacks

Rani Molla17h

Longtime Tesla bear JPMorgan upgraded Tesla and raised its price target to $475 from $145

For more than a decade, JPMorgan was Wall Street’s most stubborn Tesla skeptic, anchored by auto analyst Ryan Brinkman’s strict focus on traditional car fundamentals and near-term delivery numbers.

But JPM recently handed coverage of the stock to a new analyst, Rajat Gupta, who is throwing that playbook out the window. In a note Friday, the firm upgraded Tesla to “neutral” from “underweight” and raised its price target 228% to $475 from $145. (The analyst consensus on FactSet is $403.) Instead of focusing on the company’s struggling vehicle business, the new analyst is orienting himself more toward Tesla’s idea of the future, now modeling Tesla’s physical AI and robotaxi fleets all the way out to the year 2040.

Here are the main reasons for the capitulation:

Looking past the car lot: Gupta argues that Tesla “is at the forefront of physical AI, entering uncharted TAMs” and therefore “deserves the benefit of the doubt to be valued on LT earnings potential” rather than near-term speed bumps.
Unmatched vertical integration: Tesla’s control over everything from battery cells to custom silicon gives it a massive moat. JPM notes this starting point advantage is “unmatched at an industrial level scale” and “still somewhat under-appreciated and misunderstood.”
The AWS flywheel effect: Deploying Optimus robots inside its own factories “should not only lower COGS for the base automotive business, but more importantly, help validate the product at an industrial scale.” Gupta called it “a classic flywheel effect, somewhat analogous to AWS and Kiva at AMZN.”

For Tesla bulls who have argued for years that this is an AI company and not a carmaker, JPM’s sudden $3.9 trillion valuation model is the ultimate validation.

Anthropic ponders self-improving AI

Anthropic says Claude already writes 80% of its code. A new post asks what happens when the models can improve themselves — and whether anyone could stop them.

Jon Keegan17h