A newspaper reports that Apple will accelerate Tim Cook’s succession plan.

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The board and senior executives have stepped up preparations for a successor in recent days, multiple sources told the newspaper on condition of anonymity. Apple has not commented on the matter.

John Tarnas, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, is the most likely candidate to succeed Cook, according to sources cited by the Financial Times, but no decision has been made yet.

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Succession planning has been in the works for years, and people close to Apple cited by the Financial Times said the acceleration of the process is unrelated to the company’s recent performance.

Apple posted revenue of US$102.5 billion in the third quarter, 8% more than the same period in 2024. After the launch of the iPhone 17 in September (Brazil was included for the first time in the first wave of countries to receive the new version of the smartphone), strong sales are expected over the holidays.

Since Mr. Cook took over Apple’s helm, the company’s market value has jumped from about $350 billion to about $4 trillion, as advances in social networks and information technology have boosted big tech’s stock prices.

At the same time, Apple is frequently named among a group of companies that will fall behind in the accelerated artificial intelligence (AI) technology race since ChatGPT’s announcement at the end of 2022 drew attention to the field. As a result, the company is facing pressure to reshape its corporate strategy and increase its focus on AI.

One of the pressures is that Apple will have to choose to make major acquisitions of companies that are ahead of the curve in this technology race, which would mean breaking with the company’s tradition of developing its own technology in-house.

Two weeks ago, Bloomberg News revealed that Apple was close to signing a deal to pay about $1 billion a year for super-powered AI models developed by Google’s parent company Alphabet. The purpose is to help reimagine the voice assistant Siri, said the people, who requested anonymity.

In a report this Saturday, the Financial Times recalled that Apple had already undergone recent shakeups at the top level, with chief financial officer Luca Maestri, close to Cook, stepping down and operations director Jeff Williams announcing the same – and highlighting that Ternas’ eventual selection would put a hardware executive back in charge, with entry into new product categories potentially helping the company overcome the challenges posed by AI.