Apple is owned by its shareholders, because it is a publicly traded company. No single person or company owns it. The largest shareholders are fund managers Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street, which together hold about 21% of Apple’s stock. John Ternus runs Apple as CEO, and Tim Cook is executive chairman.
Apple’s ownership changed little in 2026, but its leadership changed a lot. Below, you will find Apple’s top shareholders with the latest filed data, how much stock its leaders own, whether Warren Buffett still holds Apple, and who founded the company in 1976.
Key Takeaways
- Apple is a public company owned by millions of shareholders; institutions hold about 66% of its stock.
- Vanguard and BlackRock are Apple’s two largest shareholders, each with about 8% to 10%, depending on the filing used.
- John Ternus became Apple’s CEO on September 1, 2026, replacing Tim Cook, who is now executive chairman.
- Berkshire Hathaway still owns about 228 million Apple shares, down from about 905 million at the end of 2023.
- Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple on April 1, 1976.
Who Owns the Most Apple Stock?
Vanguard and BlackRock own the most Apple stock. Most of these shares are held for other people, through index funds, ETFs, and retirement accounts. When you own an S&P 500 fund, part of your money is in Apple.
| Shareholder | Apple Shares | Stake |
|---|---|---|
| Vanguard (two reporting units combined) | 1.29 billion | 8.86% |
| BlackRock | 1.16 billion | 7.97% |
| State Street | 615 million | 4.21% |
| Geode Capital Management | 371 million | 2.54% |
| Fidelity (FMR) | 325 million | 2.23% |
| Morgan Stanley | 243 million | 1.66% |
| JPMorgan Chase | 229 million | 1.57% |
| Berkshire Hathaway | 228 million | 1.56% |
| Norges Bank (Norway’s wealth fund) | 191 million | 1.31% |
Source: 13F filings as of June 30, 2026, via Yahoo Finance.
Institutions own about 66% of Apple’s shares, and insiders, such as executives and directors, own about 1.65%. The rest belongs to individual investors and smaller funds.
Why do some websites say BlackRock is first and others say Vanguard? It depends on the source. Apple’s own 2026 proxy statement, based on January 2026 data, lists Vanguard at 9.63% and BlackRock at 7.10%. In the newer June 2026 filings, Vanguard reports through two separate units. Each unit on its own is smaller than BlackRock, but combined, Vanguard is still Apple’s largest shareholder.
Who Controls Apple?
Shareholders own Apple, but the board of directors and the CEO control it. This is how most public companies work. Shareholders vote to elect the board, and the board hires the CEO. Because no investor owns more than about 10%, no single shareholder can control the company.
Apple changed its leadership on September 1, 2026, as it announced in April:
| Role | Person | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Chief Executive Officer | John Ternus | Took over from Tim Cook; also joined the board |
| Executive Chairman | Tim Cook | CEO from 2011 to 2026 |
| Lead Independent Director | Arthur Levinson | Chairman for 15 years before the change |
Who is the CEO of Apple? John Ternus has been Apple’s CEO since September 1, 2026. He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 and led hardware engineering for products like the iPad and AirPods before becoming CEO.
What does Tim Cook do now? As executive chairman, Cook leads the board and helps with selected company matters, including work with policymakers. He led Apple for 15 years, during which its market value grew from about $350 billion to about $4 trillion.
How Much Apple Stock Do Its Leaders Own?
Apple’s executives own a tiny share of the company compared with the big fund managers. All directors and executive officers together hold well under 1%.
| Person | Role | Apple Shares |
|---|---|---|
| Arthur Levinson | Lead independent director | About 4.1 million |
| Tim Cook | Executive chairman | About 3.3 million |
| John Ternus | CEO | About 81,000 (estimate) |
Levinson’s and Cook’s figures come from SEC filings in late 2025 and early 2026. Ternus’s figure is an estimate by Quiver Quantitative based on his SEC filings, after he sold about 25,000 shares in October 2026. His holding will grow as his new CEO stock awards vest.
Even Cook’s stake, worth roughly $1 billion at 2026 prices, equals only about 0.02% of Apple. That is why individual executives do not appear in the top shareholder list.
Does Warren Buffett Still Own Apple?
Yes, but much less than before. Warren Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, owned about 228 million Apple shares as of June 30, 2026, or 1.56% of the company.
Berkshire first bought Apple in 2016 and built its stake to about 905 million shares by the end of 2023. It then sold most of it, cutting to about 300 million shares by late 2024 and continuing to trim in 2025. Apple is still one of Berkshire’s largest holdings, but Berkshire is no longer one of Apple’s top five shareholders.
Many older articles still describe Buffett as one of Apple’s biggest owners. That was true in 2023, not today.
Who Founded Apple?
Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple Computer Company on April 1, 1976, in California. Jobs and Wozniak each owned 45% of the new company, and Wayne owned 10%.
What happened to Ronald Wayne’s 10% stake? Wayne sold it back to Jobs and Wozniak within days for $800. He worried about being personally responsible for the young company’s debts. A 10% stake in Apple today would be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
Apple went public on December 12, 1980, at $22 a share, which made Jobs and Wozniak millionaires. From that point, Apple’s owners became its public shareholders.
Does Steve Jobs still own Apple? No. Jobs died in 2011. After leaving Apple in 1985, he sold all but one of his shares. When he returned in 1997, he rebuilt only a small stake of about 5.5 million shares, which passed to his estate. Most of his wealth came from his stake in Disney, which bought his company Pixar.
Does Steve Wozniak still own Apple stock? Wozniak left Apple’s daily operations in 1985. He does not appear among Apple’s major shareholders, and there is no public record of him holding a large stake today.
Does Bill Gates or Microsoft Own Apple?
No. Neither Bill Gates nor Microsoft owns a meaningful stake in Apple today. The idea comes from August 1997, when Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple at a time when Apple was struggling.
That investment bought non-voting preferred stock, so Microsoft never had a say in how Apple was run. Microsoft converted the shares to about 18 million common shares by 2001 and sold all of them by 2003, according to Engadget. The deal also included a promise to keep Microsoft Office available on Mac.
What Companies Does Apple Own?
Apple owns many smaller companies it has bought over the years. Most are folded into Apple’s products, but some keep their brand names:
| Company | What It Does | Acquired |
|---|---|---|
| Beats Electronics | Headphones and speakers | 2014, for $3 billion (Apple’s largest deal) |
| Shazam | Song-recognition app | Announced 2017, about $400 million |
| Claris | Business software (FileMaker) | Created by Apple as a subsidiary in 1987 |
Who owns Beats? Apple owns Beats. It bought Beats Electronics and Beats Music in 2014 from founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, and the streaming side became part of Apple Music.
Can You Buy Apple Stock?
Yes. Apple trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker AAPL. Anyone with a brokerage account can buy shares, and many people already own Apple through index funds that track the S&P 500 or Nasdaq-100.
Apple first touched a $5 trillion market value in July 2026, making it the second company ever to reach that mark after Nvidia. Its value depends on how it performs against rivals such as Samsung, Google, and Microsoft, covered in our guide to Apple’s competitors. To see what drives that value, read our Apple SWOT analysis. For the customers behind its sales, see our breakdown of Apple’s target market.
Bottom Line
Apple has no single owner. It belongs to millions of shareholders, and the largest are fund managers holding shares on behalf of ordinary investors. For me, the most important ownership change of 2026 is not about shareholders at all: it is the handover from Tim Cook to John Ternus, which shapes where Apple goes next. If you want to own a piece of Apple, a single share or an S&P 500 index fund will do it.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Apple is an American company based in Cupertino, California, and its largest shareholders are US fund managers. Many iPhones are assembled in China by partner factories, which is why some people link Apple to China.
No country owns Apple. It is a US public company. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, run by Norges Bank, holds about 1.3% of Apple’s stock as an investment, but that gives it no control.
After Steve Jobs stepped down in 2011, Apple stayed owned by its public shareholders. Tim Cook took over as CEO and led Apple until September 1, 2026, when John Ternus became CEO and Cook became executive chairman.
Apple has millions of individual shareholders, plus more than 7,700 institutions that report holdings to the SEC. Many people also own Apple indirectly through index funds and retirement accounts without holding the stock themselves.
Apple went public on December 12, 1980, selling shares at $22 each on the Nasdaq. The IPO turned Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak into millionaires and opened Apple’s ownership to public investors.
