John Ternus took over as CEO of Apple this week with an enviable moat: a company worth more than $4.5 trillion with more than 2.5 billion devices in use and one of the most loyal customer bases in technology.
He also inherited an AI strategy that remains a work in progress.
The former Apple hardware chief officially succeeded Tim Cook as CEO on Sept. 1 as Apple tries to turn AI from a collection of features into something more fundamental to its products. Cook becomes executive chairman.
“AI is the single biggest challenge for Ternus,” Brian Mulberry, chief market strategist at Zacks Investment Management, an Apple shareholder, told Reuters. “Apple needs to demonstrate that AI will be more than an app on the iPhone, more than Siri.”
Under Cook, Apple’s market value has risen from $350 billion to $4.5 trillion. But Apple has yet to produce a comparable breakthrough around generative AI, and its effort to overhaul Siri has been marked by delays.
Ternus now has to determine how much of Apple’s AI future it needs to build itself – and how much it can obtain from others.
Apple and Google announced a multiyear AI agreement in January, and Apple announced in June that its latest Foundation Models were built in collaboration with Google using technologies behind its Gemini models.
Ternus’ hardware background could also shape Apple’s next move. The company reportedly has been developing smart glasses, camera-equipped AirPods and other devices that could make AI a more ambient part of users’ lives.