After 15 years as CEO, Tim Cook stepped aside, replaced by longtime executive John Ternus. As my colleague Sebastian Herrera wrote in a just-published profile of Ternus, he steps up at a tense moment for the $4.75 trillion company:
Cook has made Apple a cash-flow king and one of the world’s supply-chain titans, but as Ternus inherits the iPhone-maker from the legendary CEO, Apple is grappling with questions about its strategy on artificial intelligence, where it is facing competition from hot upstarts like OpenAI. Meanwhile, a memory chip shortage threatens to squeeze its margins, its revenue growth is slowing, and even longtime Apple fans admit the maker of aspirational tech has lost some of its product design mojo.
Though Apple accounts for roughly one in five smartphones shipped worldwide, it’s been a while since the company truly surprised consumers. Recent launch events have mostly settled into a predictable cadence of incremental camera upgrades and routine spec bumps. There have been notable misfires, too, including the Vision Pro headset and updates to its Siri voice-activated assistant. Major software overhauls, like the polarizing Liquid Glass iOS redesign, faced sharp criticism over legibility and performance. Meanwhile, Apple’s long-rumored foldable phone will arrive years after competitors like Samsung defined the category.
The stakes are even higher now in many ways, because every tech company that matters in Silicon Valley is racing to build out new form factors specifically designed for the AI era. That poses a massive risk for Apple, which has been behind the curve in popular products like AI-enabled glasses.
Apple’s role in the private markets has been somewhat muted in the AI era. Far from a cutting-edge AI leader, the company’s a sometime acquirer (in January, Apple announced its almost $2 billion acquisition of audio AI startup Q.ai, its second-largest deal ever). A massive shift might be coming under Ternus’s leadership. As Herrera writes:
Some Apple analysts told Fortune that Ternus’s product background is exactly the kind of expertise Apple needs at this moment.
Ternus “has the opportunity to be more prescriptive about device design and about preferences around [the user interface],” said Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan, who wrote in a recent note that Apple’s move away from a net cash neutral financial strategy indicated it could devote more investment toward research and development, capital expenditures, and acquisitions, which may be required for Apple to keep pace in the AI era.
Right after Labor Day, on Sept. 9, Ternus will appear at Apple’s big product event. And a new era will begin. In the meantime, read Sebastian’s whole story here.
ICYMI… Oura, maker of the ubiquitous smart ring, yesterday officially filed to go public on the Nasdaq. The company’s VC backers include Iconiq and Gradient Ventures. Check out the video story I hosted on Oura, Tonal, and the future of AI in health and fitness here.
Have a great long weekend, and we’ll be back on Tuesday,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: [email protected]
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VENTURE CAPITAL
– Thyme Care, a Nashville, Tenn.-based cancer care company, raised $125 million in Series E funding from Morgan Health, CVS Health Ventures, Humana, and others.
– Atira, a Munich, Germany-based AI software company for industrial sales teams, raised $17.5 million in funding, including a $15 million seed round led by Accel and joined by UVC, Fortino, and Booom.
– askpolly, an Ottawa, Ontario-based Microsoft AI market-research company, raised $3 million in seed funding. Differential Ventures led the round and was joined by The 98 and Forum Ventures.
PRIVATE EQUITY
– Updata Partners invested $50 million in Hi Rasmus, a Copenhagen, Denmark and Nashville, Tenn.-based clinical software company for behavioral health providers.
– AMS Fulfillment, a portfolio company of Fort Point Capital, acquired Vox Fulfillment, a Provo, Utah-based e-commerce fulfillment company. Financial terms were not disclosed.
– Arxis, backed by Arcline Investment Management, acquired Schatz Bearing Corporation, a Poughkeepsie, N.Y.-based precision bearings manufacturer, and StratEdge Corporation, a Poway, Calif.-based ceramic semiconductor-packaging company. Financial terms were not disclosed.
– Officine Maccaferri, backed by Ambienta, acquired Ovattificio Alpino, a Cittadella, Italy-based non-woven geotextiles and technical felts manufacturer. Financial terms were not disclosed.
OTHERS
– Nvidia agreed to acquire Hugging Face, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based open source AI platform, for $12.9 billion.
IPOs
– Accelevation Holdings, a Miamisburg, Ohio-based data center power and infrastructure company, filed to go public on the Nasdaq. The company posted $727 million in sales for the year ended June 30. Olympus Funds backs the company.
– Oura, a San Francisco, Calif.-based health-focused technology company and developer of the Oura ring, filed to go public on the Nasdaq. The Johnson family, Forerunner Ventures, Bedford Ridge Investment Company, and Lifeline Ventures back the company.
FUNDS + FUNDS OF FUNDS
– CVC Secondary Partners, a Luxembourg-based private markets manager, raised $10 billion for its sixth Secondary Opportunities Fund focused on the private equity secondary mid-market.
– Swish Ventures, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based venture capital firm, raised $250 million for its third fund focused on the cybersecurity, technology infrastructure, physical AI, defense, AI for industrial applications, and government technology sectors.
PEOPLE
– Earlybird VC, a European venture capital firm, hired Alina Bassi as a Principal. Previously, she was with Ananda VC.
– Playground Global, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capital firm, promoted Rahul Meka and Daniel Yum to Partner.
