Apple and Renault Group both now have 2 procurement leaders in key executive positions.

* Tim Cook, CEO of Apple (ex-procurement himself), was recently joined by Sabih Khan as COO in July 2025. Sabih started his career with Apple back in 1995 in their procurement group and spent 26 years building out their global procurement capabilities.

* Capucine Lorenzi was promoted from VP of Purchasing to COO of Alpine in April 2025. This follows senior procurement roles at GNV and Ferrari. For those who don't know, Alpine are a performance-oriented brand owned by Renault. Last month, they also promoted their CPO, Francois PROVOST, to CEO.

Why is this so interesting?

Renault and Apple are two of the largest and most influential businesses in the world. 

Between them, they have almost 350,000 employees and generated nearly $500 billion in revenue in 2024.

Yet despite marketing vastly different products, they both have one major thing in common.

Procurement is absolutely critical to their business. 

This begs the question. Are we beginning to see a shift in priorities that puts procurement leaders front and centre for executive leadership?