Face au cancer et aux maladies neurodégénératives, Nanobiotix mise sur ses prometteuses nanoparticules
DÉCRYPTAGE - La biotech française vient de lever 85 millions d’euros afin d’accélérer le développement de nouveaux médicaments, qui intéressent déjà de nombreux laboratoires pharmaceutiques.
Nanobiotix lève des fonds pour accélérer le développement de nouveaux médicaments. Créé il y a plus de vingt ans par le physicien Laurent Levy, Nanobiotix est en passe de révolutionner le traitement du cancer par radiothérapie. Cette biotech, dont la spécificité est de créer des nanoparticules destinées au corps humain, amorce désormais le développement de nouvelles thérapies innovantes au-delà du champ de la cancérologie, dans le traitement d’Alzheimer, par exemple. Elle vient pour ce faire de lever 85 millions d’euros, à Paris et à New York, où elle est doublement cotée. « Nous ne voulions pas attendre que notre premier produit soit sur le marché pour pouvoir accélérer le développement des autres », explique Laurent Levy, dont la société est désormais valorisée 1,7 milliard d’euros.
Le produit phare de Nanobiotix est un médicament composé de nanoparticules qui boostent les effets de la radiothérapie. « Il a été conçu de telle sorte qu’il absorbe l’énergie de la radiothérapie pour en accroître les effets, explique le PDG fondateur. C’est un amplificateur local. L’efficacité du traitement s’en trouve accrue, sans accroissement des effets secondaires » dans les tissus sains. Une fois injectées, les nanoparticules restent pour toujours dans la tumeur, mais ne s’activent que lorsque celle-ci est irradiée.
Des essais pour le cancer du poumon
C’est dans le traitement du cancer de la tête et du cou que le développement du médicament de Nanobiotix est le plus avancé. Une étude de phase 3 (la phase finale de développement d’un médicament) est en cours dans cette indication, menée par le laboratoire américain Johnson & Johnson, avec qui Nanobiotix a signé un accord de licence en 2023. Ses résultats finaux devraient être publiés au premier semestre 2027, pour une commercialisation probable en 2028. Une étude de phase 2 est en cours dans le cancer du poumon.
Les potentielles applications de ce médicament vont au-delà de ces deux types de cancer. « 60 % des cancers se traitent actuellement par radiothérapie, souligne Laurent Levy. C’est le cas de 80 % des cancers du sein . Sur le plan financier, notre médicament a le potentiel de générer des revenus supérieurs à 5 milliards de dollars annuels. »
En vertu du contrat signé avec Johnson & Johnson, Nanobiotix devrait percevoir 200 millions d’euros ces deux ou trois prochaines années. Une fois le médicament commercialisé, la biotech touchera des royalties de 10 % à 20 % sur les ventes. Nanobiotix disposait de suffisamment de trésorerie pour tenir jusqu’à 2028. Les 85 millions d’euros levés lui permettent d’étendre ce financement jusqu’en 2029 et, surtout, de financer le développement de ses traitements en phase précoce.
Éviter les effets de mode
Ainsi du « nanoprimer », qui ne cherche pas à soigner une maladie en particulier mais à maximiser l’efficacité d’autres médicaments. « L’industrie pharmaceutique produit des traitements de plus en plus compliqués - des virus oncolytiques destinés à détruire les tumeurs, des thérapies cellulaires… - que le foie du patient va tenter d’éliminer, explique Laurent Levy. Les laboratoires tentent de rendre ces produits le plus invisibles pour le foie, mais, ce faisant, font des compromis quant à l’efficacité de leur traitement. »
La réponse de Nanobiotix consiste à leurrer le foie en le saturant, de telle sorte que le second médicament injecté, dont la vocation est thérapeutique, puisse s’échapper et trouver sa cible. « C’est un produit pour des dizaines et des dizaines d’applications ou de combinaisons potentielles », souligne Laurent Lévy. De nombreux biotechs et laboratoires pharmaceutiques ont déjà manifesté leur intérêt pour ce produit, que Nanobiotix développe depuis cinq ans.
Autre piste de recherche : les maladies neurodégénératives. Fidèle à sa formation de physicien, Laurent Levy considère le cerveau comme un circuit électrique plutôt que comme un organe biologique. « Dans le cas de la maladie d’Alzheimer ou de Parkinson, il y a toujours un problème de communication entre les neurones, explique-t-il. Celle-ci peut-être trop lente, trop rapide ou désynchronisée. Nous développons dans ce domaine des particules qui modifient la conduction de l’électricité dans le cerveau. »
Dans tous les cas, Nanobiotix s’attache à sortir des sentiers battus. « Quand des centaines de laboratoires et de biotechs travaillent sur les mêmes produits et essaient d’arriver les premiers, nous avons décidé de faire quelque chose de complètement différent, à partir de la physique, explique le PDG. Plutôt que de cibler une maladie ou un récepteur en particulier, nous créons de nouvelles classes de médicaments. Nos produits ont des modes d’action génériques, qui peuvent adresser n’importe quel type de patients. » Un chemin plus long, mais plus fructueux s’il aboutit.
>>> Up
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>>> Down
>>> Down
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>>> Initiation
* Circle Internet Rated New Sector Weight at KeyBanc
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>>> Initiation
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>>> Call
>>> Call
* Air France Raised, Lufthansa Cut at Morgan Stanley, IAG Top Pick
* Aryzta Nearing a Turning Point, Upgraded to Buy at Berenberg
* Outokumpu Raised, Oddo BHF More Positive on Stainless Steel
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* Attractive Entry Point in European Listed Real Estate: Jefferies
LA LETTRE — 26/05/26 - 📩 Ask me for the full article on any item.
🇫🇷 FRANÇAIS
POLITIQUE
PS — Le think-tank d’Olivier Faure prend forme. Faure prépare le lancement d’un laboratoire d’idées rattaché au PS, confié à Floran Vadillo et Gaétan Gorce (objectifs/forme), puis à Julie Martinez et Gaston Laval (conseil scientifique, annonce le 8 juin). Nom provisoire retenu : “Noûs”. Objectif assumé : concurrencer LFI en agrégeant sociologues, philosophes et économistes proches de la social-démocratie. Liens étroits avec l’Institut Rousseau de Nicolas Dufrêne. — D. Bernard
Place Beauvau — Laurent Nuñez tranche pour le “36”. Le ministre de l’Intérieur a transmis à l’Élysée le nom de Virginie Lahaye (actuelle sous-directrice affaires cyber et financières) pour diriger la PJ parisienne. Elle serait la 2ᵉ femme à ce poste après Martine Monteil. Profil “décloisonnement”, proche du dispositif Force d’investigation conjointe voulu par Nuñez. Nomination à entériner en conseil des ministres. — O. Bonnaud
Paris — La majorité Grégoire se partage les SEM. Répartition votée le 20 mai. Continuité globale : Belliard garde la RIVP (≈619 M€ CA, 65 000 logements), les communistes conservent Elogie-Siemp, Lejoindre reste à P&Ma, Coumet à la Semapa. Lucie Castets prend l’Accor Arena ; Ariel Weil bien placé pour la tour Eiffel (SETE, 106 M€ CA, modèle fragile). — L. Cabanes
Parlement européen — Le RN s’invite sur l’accélérateur industriel Séjourné. L’eurodéputée RN Mathilde Androuët désignée rapporteure pour avis (commission ENVI) sur l’Industrial Accelerator Act. Elle veut durcir les critères du “Made in Europe”. Vote en plénière de décembre. — LL
ENTREPRISES
Énergie — Le bâtiment rejette l’interdiction du gaz dans le neuf. Le CSCEE a rejeté (avis consultatif) la mesure phare du plan d’électrification (plus de gaz dans le neuf à compter de 2030 ; décret visant le 1ᵉʳ janvier 2027). Surtransposition perçue de la directive 2024. Macron reçoit ce mardi 26 mai l’“équipe de France de l’électricité”. — S. Prigent
MÉDIAS
Mediawan fusionne quatre boîtes de production. Capton regroupe Réservoir, Maximal, Troisième Œil et Hide Park dans Mediawan France Unscripted (ex-Mediawan Prod HOT). Toile de fond : litiges sur l’emploi d’intermittents (doubles CDDU), courrier Drieets, plaintes en justice. La fusion entraînerait la dissolution des CSE et mandats syndicaux existants. — C. Boullay
🇬🇧 ENGLISH
POLITICS
PS — Faure finalizes Socialist think-tank. Faure is launching a PS-linked think-tank, run by Vadillo/Gorce then Martinez/Laval (scientific board unveiled June 8). Provisional name: “Noûs”. Aim: counter LFI by aggregating left-leaning academics. Close ties to Dufrêne’s Institut Rousseau.
Police — Nuñez picks Lahaye for Paris PJ “36”. Interior Minister forwarded Virginie Lahaye’s name to the Élysée to head the Paris judicial police — would be 2nd woman in the role. Cabinet approval pending.
Paris — Grégoire majority divvies up city-owned firms (SEM). May 20 vote; broad continuity. Belliard keeps RIVP (≈€619M rev., 65k homes); communists keep Elogie-Siemp; Castets takes Accor Arena; Weil favored for Eiffel Tower (SETE, €106M, fragile model).
EU Parliament — RN grabs influence on Séjourné’s Industrial Accelerator Act. RN MEP Androuët named ENVI opinion rapporteur; pushing stricter “Made in Europe” criteria. December plenary vote.
CORPORATES
Energy — Builders reject gas ban in new buildings. CSCEE rejected (advisory) the electrification plan’s flagship measure (no gas in new builds from 2030; decree targeting Jan 1, 2027). Seen as over-transposition of 2024 EU directive. Macron hosts the “Team France electricity” today.
MEDIA
Mediawan merges four production companies. Capton consolidates Réservoir, Maximal, Troisième Œil, Hide Park into Mediawan France Unscripted. Backdrop: labor disputes over freelance (“intermittent”) double-contracts, regulator warning, lawsuits. Merger would dissolve existing works councils and union mandates.
Mistral AI Takes Aim at Legal Sector Through Expanded Harvey AI Partnership
Mistral will gain access to more than 1,500 customers that use Harvey across over 60 countries
Mistral AI is bringing its models to the legal sector under a partnership with the startup Harvey AI, taking aim at a lucrative industry where rivals like Anthropic are expanding aggressively.
The French artificial-intelligence company will feature on a list of models that San Francisco-based Harvey offers on its platform to help law firms and in-house legal teams streamline work in areas like contract analysis, due diligence, compliance and litigation. Mistral models will initially be available to a few customers based in the European Union ahead of a wider rollout.
Lawyers handle troves of text and data, making the legal industry fertile ground for large language models that can help sift through documents. The potential to automate tasks and give lawyers extra time to take on more cases is an incentive to pay top-tier prices for AI tools.
Mistral will gain access to more than 1,500 customers that use Harvey across over 60 countries, putting it on steadier footing as it jockeys for position in an industry where Anthropic has already made strides: The Claude maker recently added more legal tools known as plug-ins that paying customers can use through its Cowork assistant.
Mistral’s partnership with Harvey isn’t new—the companies announced a collaboration in May 2024 to work out how to support clients. In a joint interview, Mistral Chief Revenue Officer Marjorie Janiewicz and Harvey Chief Operating Officer Katie Burke said the two startups dipped their toes in the water at the time and were jumping in now that Mistral models had evolved.
“The difference here was before we were thinking about it as a pilot,” Burke said. “Now, this is a permanent partnership that we’ll make publicly available to Harvey customers.”
For Mistral, the move represents an opportunity to delve into a niche and highly technical arena where users expect increasingly capable models that understand jurisdictional nuances and comply with data-privacy requirements.
Janiewicz said Mistral had set its sights on financial services and other industries with strong data-protection needs since the early days of the startup, and that it made perfect sense to focus on legal as it also ticks the box around the need for security. Mistral could explore further partnerships to expand elsewhere, she added.
“You should definitely expect us to become more and more present in any industry that, as I mentioned, would really value control of the data and also customization,” Janiewicz said.
For Harvey, the partnership means it can offer more choice to clients by adding Mistral to its repertoire of models that includes Anthropic, ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Alphabet’s Google. Burke said over half of Harvey’s customers were outside the U.S. and it was critical for the platform to provide a model that understands a global context and works across multiple languages.
AI tools are improving at a dizzying pace, raising fears that the technology could wipe out jobs across legal, accounting and other industries where software is essential. Earlier this year, Anthropic’s release of new capabilities to automate processes like contract reviews and legal briefings triggered a selloff in software-as-a-service stocks.
Stocks trimmed gains and crude oil advanced after US strikes on sites in Iran curbed optimism over a potential deal to end the war. S&P 500 futures rose 0.6%, though gains were more modest than Monday, when US markets were shut. Asian shares were up 0.5%, off session highs, as American forces hit missile launch sites in Iran and boats trying to place mines, the US Central Command said. Authorities described the attacks as defensive in nature. European shares were also set to drop. Weighing on risk appetite was a rebound in oil prices after the strikes clouded the outlook for an interim deal to reopen the vital Strait of Hormuz. Brent rose almost 2% to $98 a barrel, bouncing back from Monday’s slump of more than 7%, when trading volumes were thin with holidays in London and New York. The dollar strengthened against all of its Group-of-10 peers, while gold erased earlier gains to fall 0.6% to about $4,545 an ounce. Treasuries rallied across the curve in a catch-up move as cash trading resumed after a break. Traders remained cautiously optimistic as the back-and-forth over a potential Middle East deal continued to drive swings across markets, with global stocks hitting a record Monday on bets the worst of the energy shock may be over. Elevated oil prices and inflation concerns have meanwhile fueled speculation the Federal Reserve may keep interest rates higher for longer. Earlier, US President Donald Trump said that negotiations with Iran over an interim deal to extend their ceasefire and reopen the strait were “proceeding nicely.” Pakistan’s military chief, Asim Munir, the main interlocutor between the warring sides, told China an agreement was “close to being reached.” The ongoing negotiations with Iran will take a few days, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said. Key sticking points remain unresolved, however, including the future of Iran’s nuclear program. Its Tasnim news agency reported the draft agreement could still collapse because of US objections to several provisions, including Tehran’s demand that frozen assets be released. In other geopolitical news, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged Rubio to evacuate American citizens and diplomats from Kyiv ahead of what Moscow said would be an escalation of strikes on the Ukrainian capital, according to a statement from Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Monday. Meanwhile, shares in Hong Kong fluctuated as they returned from their holiday. That’s after Chinese investors rushed to find alternative ways to buy and sell overseas equities after Beijing launched its most forceful crackdown on illicit cross-border stock trading to stem capital outflows.
Nikkei -0.15% Hang Seng +0.27% CSI +0.14% Shanghai -0.57% Shenzen -0.92%
Eur$ 1.1630 CNH 6.7883 CNY 6.7881 JPY 159 GBP 1.3479 CHF 0.7835 RUB 71.6169 TRY 45.9031 WTI$ 92.03 -4.73% Gold 4,534 -0.85% BTC 76,866 -0.45% ETH 2,101.50 -0.62%
S&P +0.60% Nasdaq +0.81% EuroStoxx -0.32% FTSE +0.18% Dax -0.39% SMI +0.88%
Macro :
- Israel Will Intensify Lebanon Strikes Amid US-Iran Deal Talks
- Ukraine Rejects Easing Pressure on Belarus Potash: Sybiha (NTR US, MOS US, SDF GY, BHP LN, YARA NO)
Keep an eye on :
Keep an eye on :
- AAPL US : Apple has an innovation gap. Will its new CEO fill it? - FT
- AZN LN : AstraZeneca CEO Says Could Invest Over $12b in Japan: Nikkei
- BST IM : Banca CF+ Reiterates It Doesn’t Intend to Delist Banca Sistema
- COXG SM : Cox Group Took 20% Bridge Loan for Mexico Deal
- DNR IM : De Nora to Buy BW Water at Enterprise Value of $61.5M to $66.5M
- ENI IM : Eni Looks to Speed Up $4 Billion Oil Expansion in Ivory Coast
- ENI IM : Eni Looks to Speed Up $4 Billion Oil Expansion in Ivory Coast
- EQNR NO : Equinor Ordered to Reduce Alarm Rate for Sverdrup Control Room
- RACE IM : Ferrari launches first EV with Jony Ive’s ‘polarising’ design - FT --> -5% pre market
- IBE SM : Cox Group Took 54% Bridge Loan for Deal to Buy Iberdrola Mexico
- IDR SM : *INDRA MULLS NAMING RENAULT'S RECASENS AS NEW CEO: CONFIDENCIAL
- SDF GY : Ukraine Rejects Easing Pressure on Belarus Potash: Sybiha
- LEHN SW : Lem FY Sales Meet Estimates
- Noja Power (Private) : Goldman Sachs plays long game for NOJA Power, $1b deal in works
- NDX1 GY : Top European wind turbine maker calls ‘non-western’ rivals a security threat - FT
- NDX1 GY : Nordex Gets 110 MW Wind Turbine Order From Eksim Enerji
- SPOT US : Spotify chief defends AI-generated music - FT Article Link
- WOR AU : Worley Gets Services Contract From American Electric Power
>>> Up
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* British Land Raised to Overweight at Barclays; PT 465 pence
* Carmila Raised to Buy at Jefferies; PT 20 euros
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* QinetiQ Raised to Buy at Peel Hunt; PT 615 pence
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* Zurich PT Raised from 656 CHF 711 CHF
>>> Down
>>> Down
* Elior Cut to Neutral at Citi; PT 2.40 euros
* Frontline PLC Cut to Hold at Pareto Securities; PT $40
* Grand City Properties Cut to Hold at Jefferies; PT 9.90 euros
* Lufthansa Cut to Underweight at Morgan Stanley; PT 6.20 euros
* Taylor Wimpey Cut to Sell at Goldman; PT 75 pence
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>>> Initiation
* Circle Internet Rated New Sector Weight at KeyBanc
* Wacker Chemie Cut to Neutral at UBS; PT 104 euros
>>> Initiation
* Circle Internet Rated New Sector Weight at KeyBanc
* GE Vernova Rated New Add at Huatai Research; PT $1,174
* Pershing Square USA Rated New Market Perform at KBW; PT $42
* Pershing Square Inc. Rated New Neutral at UBS; PT $39
* Pershing Square Inc. Rated New Sector Perform at RBC; PT $40
* Science Group Rated New Buy at Peel Hunt; PT 755 pence
* Ypsomed Rated New Underperform at Jefferies; PT 280 Swiss francs
>>> Call
>>> Call
* Air France Raised, Lufthansa Cut at Morgan Stanley, IAG Top Pick
* Aryzta Nearing a Turning Point, Upgraded to Buy at Berenberg
* Outokumpu Raised, Oddo BHF More Positive on Stainless Steel
* Outokumpu Raised, Oddo BHF More Positive on Stainless Steel
* Attractive Entry Point in European Listed Real Estate: Jefferies
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- Equinor Ordered to Reduce Alarm Rate for Sverdrup Control Room
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- Ferrari (2FE TH) -7.4%
- Ferrari Rolls Out Five-Seat Fully Electric Car in Brand First
DAX:
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MDAX:
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- TUI (TUI1 TH) -1.2%
- Lufthansa (LHA TH) -1.3%
- Lufthansa Cut to Underweight at Morgan Stanley; PT 6.20 euros
- Salzgitter (SZG TH) -1.6%
- Wacker Chemie (WCH TH) -1.7%
- Wacker Chemie Cut to Neutral at UBS; PT 104 euros
SDAX:
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Apple has an innovation gap. Will its new CEO fill it?
The tech titan that once urged consumers to ‘think different’ may itself be ripe for disruption in the AI age
In early 2025, Apple software engineers were working around the clock to deliver the company’s next trick.
The previous June, software chief Craig Federighi had walked onstage at the company’s annual developer conference to unveil an overhauled Siri voice assistant that would act like a true companion, using AI to carry out tasks on command.
What the audience gathered in the Cupertino sunshine cheering Federighi’s demonstration did not know was that the new personalised AI agent did not yet exist.
The Siri team had been given just nine months to deliver. And as the spring 2025 deadline approached, progress was not good. Federighi circulated a bug report listing queries he had put to the new Siri, with red crosses next to each failed response, according to people familiar with the document.
“Internally, Apple called the project ‘Endgame’ because executives realised that if it didn’t ship, it was the end,” says one executive. A final item on Federighi’s list, the person adds, was “something to the effect of ‘Hey Siri, is OpenAI better than Siri?’”
The miss resulted in a $250mn class action settlement over false advertising and the departure of several top executives, including longtime AI chief John Giannandrea.
It was a chastening moment for a company that built its reputation — and vast financial success — on taking new technology, perfecting it and marrying it with consumer-friendly innovations.
In the 2000s, Apple reinvented the entire consumer electronics industry with a series of era-defining products. Today the group is a $4.5tn, 50-year-old behemoth that relies on selling an ever-expanding suite of services, mostly via a product unveiled two decades ago: the iPhone.
Following the debacle over the voice assistant, and other indicators that the pace of innovation is not what it was, the question is whether the group that once urged consumers to “think different” is itself now ripe for disruption in the age of AI.
It is John Ternus, an engineer steeped in the leadership culture of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who must address this challenge. The 51-year-old will take over as chief executive from Tim Cook in September as the company looks to generate new excitement about its products and move into ambitious new categories such as AI pins — wearable voice-controlled devices — and robotic tabletop arms.
“It’s about making things that are sublime, to create what Steve called an ‘insanely great’ moment,” says a former colleague who worked with both Jobs and Ternus.
“It’s too easy to say Apple doesn’t do anything any more; they are constantly delivering best-in-class products,” the person adds. “But people are asking to feel something.”
Jobs, Ternus and the innovation era
Few companies have been shaped by the personality of their leader as much as Apple. Jobs placed design purity at the heart of the company, driving its engineers to develop whole new manufacturing techniques to create aesthetically pleasing, beautifully engineered versions of existing products such as PCs and smartphones.
Ternus belongs to a dwindling generation of engineers still at Apple who were part of the extraordinary era of innovation between 2000 and 2010 that brought the iPod, the iPhone, the MacBook and the iPad.
Jobs and design chief Sir Jony Ive defined Apple’s devices by reimagining the materials they should be made from and the ways in which users should interact with them. Both processes placed huge pressure on Apple’s engineers, as Ternus soon discovered.
Around five years into his quarter-century career at Apple, he was made lead engineer on a project to reinvent the iMac. Apple’s PC, the first major collaboration between Jobs and Ive, had wowed consumers at its 1998 launch with its unconventional bubble design and playful colours, but was due another upgrade.
The vision was to use a single flat piece of metal encasing a flat screen and the computer’s circuit boards, doing away with the separate bulky unit traditionally associated with PCs. While the original iMac was assembled in California, Apple was increasingly relying on factories in Asia to make its products at scale and at lower cost — a process led by Cook, then operations chief.
Ternus flew to China, where Taiwan’s Foxconn was being lined up to make the device. “It was the first time we did such a metal bezel piece, and we didn’t really know how to do it — there were a lot of new ideas in it,” recalls one former colleague.
But Ternus and his team cracked the challenge, adapting metalworking techniques that had formerly been the preserve of industries such as aerospace to create a desktop computer with a large flat screen squeezed into what seemed an impossibly flat chassis. It launched in 2007, and its minimalistic aluminium and glass aesthetic still defines the iMac today.
Ternus’s power is his “atypical clarity”, says another former colleague. “It’s not just the ability to have a really broad understanding of the many component parts of the products, but also his powers of recall, and now his understanding of the company-wide context” that will allow him to reimagine the next generation of Apple products.
Tim Cook: more money than ever
Cook’s tenure as chief executive of Apple established a model that was radically different from the design-centric company that existed under Jobs, who died in October 2011.
In financial terms, it has been one of the greatest success stories in business history. Apple now rakes in sales of over $1bn a day. Its services business alone, driven by the App Store and Apple Pay, generates more revenue than Netflix, Spotify and Adobe combined, with a margin of around 75 per cent. Under Cook, the company has returned around $1tn to shareholders through dividends and buybacks.
Nearly two decades since the product launched, Apple shipped well over 200mn iPhones in 2025 and the device still accounts for about half of Apple’s $400bn of annual sales, with high product margins underpinned by the highly efficient, Asia-based supply chain also created by Cook.
Apple’s astonishing profitability is sustained by an annual cadence of new iPhones, each iteration featuring largely incremental improvements on the one before. Research and development spending as a proportion of revenue went from 8 per cent at its height in 2001 to a 2 per cent low in 2012 as the iPhone boom began, meaning that for a while Apple was spending proportionally far less than its Big Tech peers.
But as the profits piled up, the team behind Apple’s original products began drifting away, with some citing fatigue with the gruelling schedule of annual iPhone releases. Ive left in 2019, luring multiple colleagues to his new start-up that would later join OpenAI.
Cook abandoned Jobs’ practice of daily visits to Apple’s design studio, where the different strands of Apple’s leadership would plan out the next blockbuster product together.
“The way we operated under Steve, we felt like pirates,” says another former executive. “Then suddenly you don’t have a pirate ship to steer, you have a naval ship . . . less free-spirited, less nimble and a bit more procedural.”
The result was a marked slowdown in launches of genuinely new products. Wearables such as AirPods and the Watch emerged during Cook’s tenure, along with the HomePod. But the Apple Car was abandoned after expensive years-long development and 2024’s Vision Pro headset proved a flop.
There are others indications that Cook’s model cannot deliver the growth it once did. Apple’s 2.5bn-device base is showing signs of becoming saturated and product revenue has flattened after a boost during the pandemic.
Upgrade cycles for the iPhone — the time that elapses between consumers buying one device and then trading it in for a new one — are lengthening. Last year’s iPhone 17 generated record sales, but Counterpoint Research attributes this largely to consumers who purchased smartphones during the Covid-19 boom buying new devices.
The company, which declined to comment for this article, is contending with increasing competition in China, where local rivals can offer devices that look almost identical to the iPhone using the same domestic contractors Cook recruited over two decades.
That China-dominated supply chain is also looking more vulnerable in an era of mounting trade tensions between Washington and Beijing. Efforts to diversify it, mostly by building production capacity in India, are already under way and are likely to intensify under Ternus.
By the company’s own admission the margins around its App Store, which levies commissions of up to 30 per cent, are at risk of erosion even before AI disrupts its software ecosystem.
“Regulators around the world are watching this case to determine what commission rate Apple may charge,” the company warned as it unsuccessfully petitioned the US Supreme Court to pause a legal injunction over the fees brought by Epic Games. Meanwhile the US Department of Justice is suing Apple over an alleged monopoly in smartphones.
“To be bullish on Apple here, you need to believe they can extend App Store tax and tolling to agentic AI,” says Nicholas Rodelli, director of legal research at investment research firm CFRA.
But he adds that the company is “over-reliant on the tax-taking model”, describes its App Store policies as “unsustainable” and estimates that Apple faces an 8 to 9 per cent reduction in earnings power if this model is unwound by legal challenges.
The hope expressed by Apple insiders is that Ternus will refocus the company on more radical product development through his deep understanding of hardware, and the software — including AI — that can operate on it.
“I think there’s a good chance Ternus will reinvigorate [the innovation culture of] ‘old Apple’,” says one former executive. “The pieces are all in place for a new chapter.”
Erik Woodring at Morgan Stanley describes him as “a product guy who has played a pretty critical role in delivering a number of different platforms over the years”. His task, Woodring adds, is to create a portfolio of devices that are specifically built around AI.
That would mark a return to the Jobs-era philosophy of developing integrated hardware and software to create an often radically different user experience, rather than simply bolting new features on to existing devices, as it has done with AI to date.
It was this approach that gave the world the multitouch screen on the iPhone, replacing a physical keyboard with an interface that could be navigated by a toddler.
Apple’s new take on AI could precipitate similar shifts — but it will require an appetite for disruption. A truly capable voice assistant could change the look and feel of an iPhone by drastically reducing the need for on-screen icons, for instance, and dilute the high-margin App Store model of users manually downloading apps and making individual purchases.
In late 2024, Apple acknowledged this for the first time in its legal disclosures, warning that “new products, services and technologies may replace or supersede existing offerings and may produce lower revenues and lower profit margins”.
Apple’s AI challenges
The launch of ChatGPT in 2022 showed how quickly the imagination of consumers could be captured by AI chatbots.
For Apple, the promise of a genuinely smart and intuitive voice assistant, able to carry out tasks across the device using AI models, is that it would push consumers to buy new iPhones.
But the problem of developing such a tool does not play to Apple’s traditional hardware strengths. “There is a vulnerability there for Apple,” says one former executive. “I have the biggest trust that from a hardware point of view they can build the most beautiful, highest-quality products, but in a way it’s about the ‘brain’ of the device now.”
A former employee who worked on the Siri upgrade adds that “at the end of the day, Apple is an advanced hardware company that builds ‘good enough’ software”.
The person says the company simply does not have the frontier AI models of its competitors, while its commitment to privacy prevents it from mining the critical data from users that would help it build them. At the start of this year, it agreed with Google to use its Gemini models as the backbone for more advanced AI features.
The way to make a “small” model that would work locally on an iPhone-size device “is to start with a big model”, explains Anastasios Angelopoulos, chief executive of Arena, an open platform for evaluating AI models. “You take a frontier model and progressively distil it until you have a small model that has 3bn parameters and is very close to the same performance.”
Ternus inherits an AI team at Apple that, like its design team, has seen steep attrition in a hugely competitive market. The company’s top software interface designer, Alan Dye, also left in December.
Meta and OpenAI, which have been among the most aggressive poachers, are positioning themselves as AI-powered consumer hardware competitors to Apple and have ambitions to control the AI ecosystem from end to end — the very philosophy Steve Jobs pioneered.
When Cook unveils the much-delayed AI-powered Siri at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference on June 8, part of his intention will be to give Ternus a blockbuster new AI feature to go with the foldable iPhone that Apple is due to unveil in September.
But Morgan Stanley’s Woodring says that, given the link-up with Google, Siri’s AI functionality will be heavily dictated by Gemini’s capabilities. “The debate is no longer, ‘Do you have the models to support your AI initiatives?’”
Apple needs to demonstrate “one to three clear uses” for its AI voice assistant, Woodring adds, with features compelling enough to persuade existing users to buy a new device. The longer-term aim is to outline a clear path to generating fresh revenue from AI software in the way Apple currently does from iCloud.
The outgoing chief executive is also opening the door for his successor to start spending heavily on talent and AI research; the group is already growing headcount and last month dropped its longtime commitment to balancing cash and debt. Research and development spending for the year to March reached $40bn, an increase of about 23 per cent.
Ternus will have a mandate to reshape the senior leadership team in his own image too, given that several top executives are already approaching retirement.
“If I were John, I’d be wondering how to assemble a team of warriors who are up for the challenge and look like a bunch of crazy dreamers,” as in the early days of the company, says one former colleague.
In one sense at least, Ternus will be picking up where Jobs left off. “When Jobs acquired Siri [in 2010] he was asked why he was getting into the search business,” recalls one former executive.
“And he said something like ‘I’m not — I’m getting into the AI business’.”