Apple promotes chip lead Srouji as it corners silicon in iPhones, Macs

Inside naming hardware boss John Ternus was appointed as the new CEO on Monday. Apple also announced another major promotion that could be almost as important in determining the company’s direction.

Ternus will be replaced as head of hardware by Johny Srouji, who leads the team that produces Apple’s in-house chips. Apple has created a new title for chief hardware engineer Srouji, effective immediately. Ternus will become CEO on September 1.

Ternus and Srouji make a formidable duo as Apple moves towards developing all of its chips in-house for iPhones, Macs, AirPods and more. It’s a strategy that’s been in the works for years that would allow Apple to tightly integrate hardware and software and develop the specific features it needs while avoiding unnecessary use of valuable computing power, two executives told CNBC in 2023.

“Because we don’t actually sell the chips outside, we focus on the product and that gives us the freedom to optimize,” Srouji said at the time. “And the scalable architecture allows us to reuse parts across different products.”

In December, Srouji denied rumors that he was planning to leave due to the departure of several other executives. His new role underscores Apple’s commitment to its silicon strategy, which is poised to become increasingly important as AI gains greater prominence in devices. Under Srouji’s leadership, Apple began producing more types of chips, reducing reliance on outsiders. Intel, Qualcomm And broadcom.

While Ternus has for months been seen as the front-runner to replace Cook, who turns 65 in November, the lock-in of Srouji is seen by many analysts as an equally critical move.

“We believe placing Srouji in the newly created role of Chief Hardware Officer is Apple’s most increasingly positive announcement,” analysts from Oppenheimer wrote in a report on Tuesday. “Apple not only retains one of the world’s best chip designers, but also ensures that the integrated silicon/hw/sw playbook is separated and developed.”

Keeping track of tasks at Intel and IBM’sSrouji joined Apple in 2008, less than a year after the company introduced the first iPhone with a core processor made by Samsung. A month after Srouji arrived at Apple, the company acquired chip startup PA Semiconductor for $278 million and was off to the races.

Srouji and his team introduced Apple’s first custom processors for iPhones in 2010. Custom silicone is now one of the hottest trends in technology. GoogleAmazon, MetaMicrosoft and Tesla’s they’ve all turned inward to reduce their reliance on AI chips Nvidia’s scarce and expensive graphics processing units.

When it comes to cloud workloads, Apple relies on Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs) rather than Nvidia chips.

In an interview with CNBC in 2023, Ternus said that “the most profound change at Apple” in his more than two decades at the company was “how we do a lot of these technologies in-house now, and at the top of the list, of course, is our silicon.”

“We always had an incredible design team and made these beautiful products, but they were limited to what was available,” Ternus said.

One of Apple’s biggest supply chain efforts in Cook’s final years was to support manufacturing.

All technology giants first develop their chips Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.’s factories in Asia and TSMC’s new factories in Arizona. Nvidia recently dethroned Apple is TSMC’s largest customer.

Apple’s growing chip prowess also includes a major commitment to manufacturing at TSMC’s Arizona campus and Texas Instruments’ two new factories in the US.

Apple as part of commitment to invest $600 billion in the US by 2029 in question He said in August that he was “pioneering the creation of an end-to-end silicon supply chain in the United States.”

Apple executives told CNBC in 2023 that its chip team had scaled to include thousands of engineers working in chip labs around the world, including Israel, Germany, Austria, the UK, Japan and the US.

Although Apple does not currently produce data center chips to run AI workloads in the cloud, some analysts to guess It may partner with Broadcom on a server chip later this year.

To date, Apple has focused almost entirely on AI capabilities in the end device; The company says this approach provides world-class security and privacy to users and their data.

“Their goal is to continue to be the best place to run AI software, and everyone who has tested or run AI jobs on Apple silicon continues to say they are the best,” said Ben Bajarin, CEO of Creative Strategies.

Apple’s key in-house chips are the M-series processors for Macs, which replace Intel processors starting in 2020, and the A-series chips at the heart of iPhones. Both are known as systems-on-chip or SoCs. When Apple launched its latest A19 and M5 generations in 2025, they included built-in neural accelerators to power artificial intelligence in the device.

Srouji said Apple has an advantage in AI in 2023 because “we have silicon, hardware, software and machine learning all in one team.”

The company says it has built neural accelerators into each GPU core, allowing developers to switch between different tasks faster. Apple announced its original neural engine for artificial intelligence in 2017.

When it comes to modems, Apple began to distance itself from Qualcomm by purchasing the majority of Intel’s modem business for $1 billion in 2019 after the settlement of a series of lawsuits with Qualcomm.

Apple quietly released its first iPhone modem, C1, in early 2025 and C1X Coming to iPhone 19 in September. Bajarin predicts that all iPhone modems will be produced by Apple by the end of next year.

“If they can never catch up to Qualcomm in terms of performance, I don’t think that’s going to be a deal breaker even on Pro phones,” Bajarin said. “I think it needs to work well for your coverage, be fast enough, and not drain your battery.”

In September, Apple released its own wireless chip, the N1, for the iPhone, replacing Broadcom’s. The networking chips in AirPods and Apple Watches have been manufactured by Apple for almost a decade.

Still, Apple will continue to rely on outsiders for many small chips. The Switch licenses its processors’ architecture from: Arm Holdersand other technologies from Broadcom and Qualcomm. It relies on memory from Samsung and analog chips from manufacturers such as Texas Instruments.