After serving as CEO for 14 years, Cook may step down as early as next year, the report said.

Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, 50-year-old John Ternus, is widely seen as the most likely successor, but no final decisions have been made yet, sources told the FT.

The engineer joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 and has overseen hardware engineering for most major products the tech company has launched ever since, according to Ternus’ LinkedIn profile.

He has also played a prominent role during Apple’s most recent keynotes, introducing products like the new iPhone Air. Ternus had been rumored to be Cook’s potential successor, according to previous reports. 

The company is unlikely to name a new CEO before its next earnings report in late January, and an early-year announcement would allow a new leadership team time to settle in before its annual events, the FT said. 

The succession preparations have been long-planned and are not related to the company’s current performance, which is expecting strong end-of-year sales, people close to Apple told the FT.

Apple did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment and declined to provide a comment to the FT.

The $4 trillion company is expecting year-on-year revenue growth of 10% to 12% for its holiday quarter ending in December, fueled by the release of the iPhone 17 model in September.

Ternus would take the helm of the tech giant at an important time in its evolution. Although Apple has seen sales success with iPhones and new products like Airpods over the past couple of decades, it has struggled to break into AI and keep up with rivals.

Instead, Apple has even spending significantly less in AI investments compared to Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft. 

Apple has been criticized by analysts this year for not having a clear AI strategy. And despite approving a multibillion-dollar budget to run its own models via the cloud in 2026, it was reported in June that Apple is even considering using models from OpenAI and Anthropic to power its updated version of Siri, rather than using technology the company has built in-house. 

Its AI-enabled Siri, originally slated for 2025, will be delayed until 2026 or later due to a series of technical challenges, the company announced earlier this year.

Apple has also lost a number of senior AI team members since January, many of whom have joined Meta’s AI and Superintelligence Labs during talent poaching wars this year. The exodus of Apple’s AI execs included Ruoming Pang, former head of Apple’s foundation models and core generative AI team, who joined Meta with a compensation package reportedly worth $200 million.

The company is also dealing with increased competition from one of its most influential former employees.

In May, Sam Altman’s OpenAI acquired startup io for about $6.5 billion, bringing in former Apple chief designer Jony Ive to build AI devices. The 58-year-old designer was instrumental in creating the iPhone, iPod, and iPad. 

Cook, Apple’s former operations chief, turned 65 this month. He has grown the company’s market capitalization to $4 trillion from $350 billion in 2011, when he took over the CEO role from company co-founder Steve Jobs.

Under Cook, Apple became the first publicly traded company to reach $1 trillion in market capitalization in 2018—then it became the first company to reach $3 trillion in market cap in 2022.

But more recently, its stock price has been lagging behind Big Tech rivals Alphabet, Nvidia, and Microsoft, though Apple is trading close to an all-time high after strong earnings were reported in October.

Apple has also dealt with tariff complications as U.S.-China trade tensions have disrupted its supply chain.

Cook has previously said he’d prefer an internal candidate to replace him, adding that the company has “very detailed succession plans.”

“I really want the person to come from within Apple,” Cook told singer Dua Lipa last year on her podcast At Your Service.