Tim Cook’s legacy: a successful CEO who stumbled over AI

At a glance:

• Tim Cook will step down as Apple CEO on Sept. 1 to become executive chairman, handing the reins to John Ternus.
• Analysts cite Cook’s reliance on in-house development and delayed resource allocation as key reasons Apple fell behind Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI in the AI race.
• Apple has partnered with Google to base its next-generation Apple Foundation Models on Gemini, with major feature rollouts now targeted for 2026.

A steady hand takes the helm

When Tim Cook officially took over as Apple’s CEO in August 2011, just two months before the death of co-founder Steve Jobs, the tech world was understandably skeptical. However, Cook proved his mettle by leveraging his background as Chief Operating Officer, where he had masterfully whipped the company’s operations and supply chains into shape. Under his tenure, Apple products became wildly successful and incredibly profitable, expanding the company’s portfolio into entirely new categories like the Vision Pro and Apple Watch.

Cook also oversaw the rollout of a plethora of high-margin services and demonstrated a willingness to cut losses on failed projects, such as the rumored Apple car. For over a decade, he was viewed as a worthy successor who maintained Apple’s status as the world’s most valuable company. Yet, with the announcement that he will step down as CEO on Sept. 1 to become executive chairman, the conversation has shifted to the one major blemish on his legacy: missing the AI revolution.

The cost of going it alone

While Apple introduced neural chips for AI in iPhones as early as 2017—around the same time Qualcomm introduced AI capabilities in its smartphone chips—the company failed to capitalize on the momentum. At the time, Apple’s neural engine was hailed as a revolutionary development, allowing developers to plug AI into applications and using matrix computing features to accelerate image and video processing. However, when ChatGPT took the world by storm in late 2022, it became painfully clear that Apple was years behind in the generative AI race.

Analysts point to a cultural blind spot within the Cupertino giant. Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates, noted that Cook’s failure is mostly attributable to Apple believing it could always go it alone. "They have a bias to doing everything in house," Gold said. According to a 2025 Bloomberg news report, the company simply did not believe in the generative AI shift until ChatGPT emerged, and Cook did not provide the resources needed in-house to develop an AI-powered Siri.

Leadership turbulence and technical hurdles

Behind the scenes, leadership challenges further slowed the development of Apple’s AI strategy. Apple hired former Google executive John Giannandrea in 2018 to bring AI to its products, but his leadership was largely seen as ineffective, leading to his retirement last December. Consequently, many of the main Apple Intelligence features were delayed, with hopes they would finally arrive in 2026.

In early 2026, Apple turned to former Microsoft AI leader Amar Subramanya to lead the company’s AI efforts, signaling a shift in direction. Although Apple introduced Apple Intelligence in 2024 with much fanfare, the rollout was hampered by technological challenges. While the AI layer was based on homegrown foundation models and offered innovative privacy features like Private Cloud Compute—keeping user data secure while rivals harvested data—the pace of innovation was too slow.

The pivot to partnerships

Realizing that homegrown efforts were insufficient, Apple was forced in early 2025 to look at partnering with Anthropic and OpenAI to push Siri into the AI era. Ultimately, the company settled on working with Google’s Gemini. In January, the companies released a joint statement declaring, "The next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google’s Gemini models and cloud technology."

This partnership marks a significant departure from Apple’s traditional walled-garden approach. Gold noted that the Google partnership is a solid step in the right direction, as finding the expertise to hire the right people is a major hurdle given the compensation packages that competitors are offering. "When AI is moving at such a fast pace, no one company like Apple can really move fast enough to keep up," Gold added.

The Ternus era begins

Now, the work for Apple’s soon-to-be CEO, John Ternus—formerly the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering—is clear: bring the company fully into the AI age. Ternus inherits a company that has the hardware experience and talent to build AI into a personal experience, but he must navigate the transition carefully. "Unlike previous market inflections and transitions, Apple can’t afford to come in late to the party this time around," said Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research.

To succeed, Ternus will likely have to look at more partnerships and drop Apple’s heavy reliance on in-house development. "Apple has to chart a path to reinvent the personal experience, which will drastically change devices and how we use them," McGregor said. Whether the company has finally righted the AI ship should become clear in a little over a month at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference—the last one of the Cook era.

A legacy of operational excellence

Despite the AI stumble, Cook leaves behind a company in robust financial health with a diversified product lineup that extends far beyond the iPhone. His ability to streamline global supply chains and launch successful services transformed Apple into a services powerhouse, providing a safety net that few competitors enjoy. The Vision Pro and Apple Watch stand as testaments to his willingness to explore new hardware frontiers, even if the software intelligence lagged behind.

The transition to Ternus represents a critical juncture where operational stability meets the urgent need for software agility. Cook’s legacy will be viewed as a period of immense profitability and expansion, but one that required a late-stage course correction to address the most significant shift in computing since the introduction of the smartphone. How Ternus integrates Google’s Gemini and revitalizes Siri will ultimately determine if the Apple Intelligence era becomes a success story or a footnote in the company’s history.