SAN FRANCISCO, California — Apple’s Chief Executive Tim Cook bid farewell to the tech giant on Monday, paying tribute to founder Steve Jobs and praising staff as “extraordinary,” as he passed the baton to incoming CEO John Ternus.
Cook spent nearly three decades at Apple, which he has led as CEO since 2011. He took over just weeks before Jobs died from pancreatic cancer.“We have made it possible to leave our ‘dent in the universe,’ as Steve once described it,” Cook wrote in the memo on his last day on the job.Jobs hired Cook in 1998, and by 2005, Cook was promoted to chief operating officer and cemented his reputation as a savvy supply chain manager.Under Cook, Apple has become one of the most valuable companies in the world; its market value exceeded $4.5 trillion on Monday.“Whatever there is to say about my success, I know it is all because of you,” Cook wrote to his staff. “I have never seen or been with such an extraordinary team of people before, and every day I get to see more examples of that.”Apple has around 166,000 employees around the world, according to its most recent annual report.“I love this company and the team behind it,” Cook wrote, adding that it has been “the privilege of a lifetime serving as your leader.”Cook will now become the company’s executive chairman.Ternus takes over on Sept. 1 as only the second CEO to lead Apple after Jobs.He has been with the company since 2001 when he joined its design team and eventually became senior vice president of hardware engineering.He gets just over a week to settle in, with Apple holding its annual iPhone event on Sept. 9, where it is expected to unveil its first foldable handset.The executive handover also comes at a time when Apple faces multiple challenges, including a supply chain crunch due to soaring demand for advanced computing chips, pressure to compete on artificial intelligence and a thorny political landscape in Washington.