Here’s what Warren Buffett, Sam Altman, Donald Trump, and everyone else has to say about Tim Cook stepping down

Apple’s entering a new era. The company announced on Monday that CEO Tim Cook will be stepping down and John Ternus , Apple’s current senior vice president of hardware engineering, will succeed him. Cook has led the company for almost 15 years, assuming the role shortly before founder Steve Jobs’ death in 2011. Under his leadership, Apple’s market capitalization has grown from $350 billion to $4 trillion and launched products such as iCloud, Apple Pay, Airpods, and Apple Watch, redefining the brand as more than just a phone and computer company. Cook will step down as CEO on Sept. 1, but will remain as Apple’s executive chairman. The 65-year-old boasts one of the longest tenures in Big Tech as a non-founding CEO. He navigated geopolitical conflicts, shielding Apple from tariffs , and landed huge partnerships with other Big Tech companies, and his legacy earned him praise from fellow business leaders following the announcement. “Tim Cook is a legend,” OpenAI CEO Altman wrote on X . “I am very thankful for everything he has done, and I am very thankful for Apple.” In 2024, Apple agreed to integrate OpenAI’s ChatGPT into iPhone, iPad and Mac products, ushering the chatbot to the company’s more than 1 billion users. Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway , told CNBC , “Apple would not be the Apple of today without Tim Cook.” “What he has done with Apple could not be done by anybody I’ve known,” he said. “Covering the world and getting along with countries with all kinds of histories and doing right by the customer, people who worked for him, certainly the shareholders, which we were lucky enough to be one of… he’s one of a kind,” Buffett said. Apple is Berkshire Hathaway’s largest shareholding, and Buffett has long praised Cook for his consumer-forward approach and bringing large returns for shareholders Palmer Lucky , founder of the defense company Anduril, wrote in an X post , “RIP Tim Apple,” a reference to President Donald Trump mistakenly calling the CEO “…