Apple sues OpenAI: trade-secret hardball dresses up as a lawsuit

Apple has filed suit against OpenAI alleging trade-secret theft. Read past the headline: this is what a company that missed the AI wave does when Siri still can't compete with ChatGPT.

The fact

Apple has filed a trade-secret complaint against OpenAI (Tech in Asia). Details of the alleged secrets and named ex-employees haven't been fully disclosed at time of writing.

Our reading

Apple has watched OpenAI go from ally (ChatGPT integration in iOS) to competitor (ChatGPT Work now replaces most of what Apple Intelligence was supposed to be) inside two years. A trade-secret suit is a retention weapon first, a legal weapon second - it dampens future ex-Apple engineers from taking OpenAI's calls, and it buys negotiating leverage in whatever the next iOS integration deal looks like.

Substance-wise, the bar for trade-secret cases is very high. Discovery will drag for years. But the market signal is the same either way: the Cupertino/OpenAI honeymoon is over, and Siri is not catching up.

What to watch

• Whether Google's DoJ situation lets Apple keep the search default deal (which pays the Siri gap).
• Whether Anthropic - not OpenAI - becomes Apple's real AI partner for the iPhone 18 cycle.
• Whether the suit names specific ex-employees (the tell for how personal this is).