Apple CEO Tim Cook Auctions Charity Lunch at Apple Park

Apple CEO Tim Cook is partnering up with Charitybuzz for the fifth year in a row, offering Apple fans the chance to bid on a lunch with Cook where they can hold a discussion with the CEO in a private environment. Additionally, this year the meet-up will be hosted at Apple's brand new Apple Park campus.

Like previous years, the winning bidder will be able to bring along one other person, and the lunch is said to last for around an hour. The cost of the Apple Park meal is included in the winning bid, but travel and accommodations are not. The bidding ends on May 16 at 3PM EDT and as of writing one bid of $10,000 has been entered, with the auction listing an estimated value of $100,000.

tim cook lunch 3
Over the past four years, Tim Cook and Charitybuzz have raised $610,000 (2013), $330,001 (2014), $200,000 (2015), and $515,000 (2016). This year will mark the first year that the winning bidder attends the lunch at Apple Park, which a small number of employees are believed to have moved into in April while construction remains ongoing.

Proceeds from the auction will be donated to the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, which aims to achieve a just and peaceful world by advancing corporate responsibility, teaching social justice, and partnering with human rights leaders. Cook joined the RFK Center's board of directors last year after being a longtime supporter and proponent of the charity.

Top Rated Comments

Cronowerx Avatar
91 months ago
If I was TIM COOK I would just out bid everyone and then have a quiet lunch :)
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
barkomatic Avatar
91 months ago
All the questions I'd ask him he couldn't answer so we'd talk about the weather I guess. Still, good that it's benefiting a nice charity.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ChrisCW11 Avatar
91 months ago
Really, while I am sure the auction will raise a lot of money, the assumption this experience is worth $100,000 just shows how completely out of touch with reality these CEO's and companies are these days.

Just put on the auction, but get rid of the arrogance of assuming some ridiculous value for this experience. Better yet, just donate 1 billion to charity considering Apple is sitting on $250 billion in cash reserves.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
TheTruth101 Avatar
91 months ago
Paying to eat with a man with no brain.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
busyscott Avatar
91 months ago
Me: "...what do you have for $10?"
Auctioneer: "I have these two lovely $5 bills."
Me: "...I will give you one dollar for them."
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
guzhogi Avatar
91 months ago
It's not like Apple could afford charitable donations with its mythical cash reserves. </irony>
Who says they don't? You don't have to publicize that you donated to charity.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

maxresdefault

Apple Announces 'Let Loose' Event on May 7 Amid Rumors of New iPads

Tuesday April 23, 2024 7:11 am PDT by
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple Vision Pro Dual Loop Band Orange Feature 2

Apple Cuts Vision Pro Shipments as Demand Falls 'Sharply Beyond Expectations'

Tuesday April 23, 2024 9:44 am PDT by
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple Silicon AI Optimized Feature Siri

Apple Releases Open Source AI Models That Run On-Device

Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
iPad And Calculator App Feature

Apple Finally Plans to Release a Calculator App for iPad Later This Year

Tuesday April 23, 2024 9:08 am PDT by
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
iOS 17 All New Features Thumb

iOS 17.5 Will Add These New Features to Your iPhone

Sunday April 21, 2024 3:00 am PDT by
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...