Apple has filed a trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that former Apple employees now working at the AI company solicited confidential information during job interviews and, in some cases, downloaded files from Apple's servers relating to hardware manufacturing. The Verge's senior AI reporter Hayden Field discusses the case with editor-in-chief Nilay Patel on the Decoder podcast, exploring what it reveals about OpenAI's stability and its ambitions to build hardware that could define computing after the smartphone. OpenAI denies the allegations, and has not yet filed a formal legal response.

The dispute follows OpenAI's $6.5 billion (roughly £5.1 billion) acquisition of io Products, the AI hardware startup founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive, in 2025. Legal experts consulted by Field note that Apple has a history of aggressive litigation, but its past targets, such as Microsoft and Samsung, were large corporations able to absorb the cost and disruption of prolonged legal battles. OpenAI, by contrast, is still burning through cash, lacks a settled strategy across its consumer and enterprise products, and has seen frequent executive turnover, raising questions about how well it can withstand a sustained legal fight with Apple.