Apple names John Ternus CEO as OpenAI debuts GPT-6 Astra and Nvidia acquires Hugging Face

According to a Financial Times profile published Friday, Ternus is known inside Apple as “highly competent and unshowy.” Wendell Weeks, chief executive of Corning, who worked with Ternus nearly two decades ago on the iPad, told the FT: “It was very obvious from the earliest days that John was super-talented.” Weeks described him as a humble “good guy” and added that his hobby of racing cars shows how calm and dedicated to excellence he is when it matters. A former Apple executive told the FT that Ternus was “relatively unknown outside the hardware organisation.”

Apple marked the handover with a party for Ternus at Apple Park on Tuesday, including DJing from Apple Music creative director Zane Lowe, the FT reported. One employee said they had become so used to the leadership change that they did not feel the need to attend. Tim Cook said Apple “really wanted this transition to be the best,” according to the FT. Ternus, who is married, has children, and was born and raised in California, is set to appear publicly as CEO for the first time at the company’s iPhone event next week.

Elsewhere in AI, OpenAI has announced its next major model, GPT-6 Astra, and declared that the “AGI era” is here now, The Verge reported.

Nvidia has also been moving to extend its reach across the AI stack. TechCrunch described Nvidia’s moves, including its Hugging Face acquisition, investment in MediaTek and deeper compute deals, as making the company look less like a chipmaker and more like one that wants to own the entire AI stack.