Apple’s OpenAI lawsuit is about who gets to define the post-smartphone era

Today on Decoder, I’m talking with Hayden Field, The Verge’s senior AI reporter, about the major trade secrets lawsuit between Apple and OpenAI and what this tells us about OpenAI’s future.

Apple’s OpenAI lawsuit is about who gets to define the post-smartphone era

OpenAI can’t afford another lawsuit, especially not with a company like Apple.

By now I’m sure most Decoder listeners are familiar with Apple’s allegations in this case. The company says a number of ex-Apple employees at OpenAI targeted Apple’s trade secrets in job interviews and even downloaded files from Apple’s servers related to hardware manufacturing. The claims are shocking, although OpenAI denies them, and we have yet to see the company’s legal response.

Hayden has been covering OpenAI for years now, and she also just talked to a bunch of lawyers who specialize in intellectual property and trade secret law to get a sense of how serious this case is. The answer is not entirely positive for OpenAI, which spent $6.5 billion to acquire legendary Apple designer Jony Ive’s AI hardware startup, io Products, back in 2025.

As you’ll hear Hayden explain, Apple is a notoriously tenacious litigant, and we have lots of tech industry history to back up that reputation. But those cases were against companies at the scale of Microsoft and Samsung, giant corporations that could afford the cost and distraction of this kind of litigation.

OpenAI isn’t yet that kind of company. It’s still burning cash and a little strategically adrift as it tries to compete in both enterprise and consumer markets, and it’s turning over executives on a regular basis. So Hayden and I spent a lot of time talking about what this case might mean for a company that defined the early part of the AI boom, but which lately always seems to be in a crisis of one sort or another.