Apple is undergoing its biggest leadership change since the death of Steve Jobs

Apple announced Thursday that Lisa Jackson, vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, is retiring next month. She joined Apple in 2013, Fortune reports .

For the same reason, Kate Adams, the company's general counsel, who has held this position since 2017, and Jackson joined Apple in 2013, is leaving the company. Adams will leave her position at the end of next year.

Jackson and Adams join a growing list of top executives who have either left the company or announced their departures this year. The head of the artificial intelligence unit, John Giannandrea, announced his retirement earlier this month, and Alan Dye, who led Apple’s all-important user interface design direction after Jony Ive’s departure in 2019, was poached this week by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.

The scale of these changes is unprecedented under Tim Cook. In July, Jeff Williams, Apple's chief operating officer (who had been touted as Cook's likely successor), decided to step down after 27 years at the company.

A month later, CFO Luca Maestri also left his post. The design department, which lost Day, was also left by Billy Sorrentino, a senior director who moved to Meta with Day.

However, Apple’s AI team has suffered the biggest shake-up: Ruomin Pang, head of the fundamental AI models team, moved to Meta in July, taking with him about a hundred engineers. Ke Yang (leader of AI-powered web search for Siri) and Jian Zhang (head of robotic AI) also joined Meta.

All of these layoffs are a serious blow to Apple, but the timing may not be coincidental.

Both Bloomberg and the Financial Times report that Apple is accelerating its succession plan in anticipation of Tim Cook's likely retirement in 2026. Cook, who has led the company since 2011, turned 65 in November and has grown its market capitalization from about $350 billion to an incredible $4 trillion. According to Bloomberg, John Turnus has emerged as the leading internal candidate to replace him.

Apple announced this week that it is bringing in Jennifer Newsted, currently serving as Meta's general counsel, to replace Adams as the company's general counsel, effective March 1, 2026. Newsted is expected to handle both legal and government affairs, essentially consolidating Apple's leadership responsibilities by combining Adams' and Jackson's roles into one.

Meanwhile, Alan Dye will be replaced by Stephen LeMay. The move has reportedly been met with enthusiasm within Apple, especially within its design team. John Gruber, who has written about Apple for decades and has close connections within the company, has published some pretty scathing criticism of Dye, but at the same time said that employees are borderline “giddy” about LeMay, who has worked on every major Apple interface design since 1999, including the very first iPhone.

At the same time, in the AI ​​department, John Giannandrea will be replaced by Amar Subramanya, who, before working briefly at Microsoft, led AI strategy and development at Google for almost 16 years.

There’s no doubt that the company will look fundamentally different in 2026, and the leadership team that built Apple into a $4 trillion behemoth is leaving. The transformation could be as profound as any since Jobs handed the reins to his then-COO Tim Cook 14 years ago.