Apple Sues OpenAI, Experts Sign Another AI Warning Letter, Paramount Threatens CA Exit | Diet TBPN

**John Coogan** (0:00)
Huge news over the weekend.
Mark Gurman dropped a massive scoop right after we got off on Friday night. Friday afternoon, Mark Gurman broke the news that Apple is suing OpenAI. Apple and OpenAI are going to war. The Wall Street Journal called it thermonuclear, echoed past attacks, calling back to the jobs era. We'll get to that. But first, the accusations. Apple is suing OpenAI, accusing it of stealing Apple's trade secrets. Apple Inc. sued OpenAI for trade secret theft, accusing the artificial intelligence startup and its hardware chief of engaging in a coordinated campaign to steal information about upcoming products. The iPhone maker said in a suit Friday that OpenAI encouraged Apple employees to share information, components, drawings and other materials related to upcoming products. So like, the robot? What are the upcoming products from Apple right now? Part of efforts by the AI company. The lamp, yeah, the lamp, the Cobra lamp.
The AI company developed its own suite of devices. I feel like rumors around the devices have gone back and forth. Is it a phone?
Is it headphones? Is it something else? A pin? We're having Mark Gurman on the show today to break it down for us. He's coming on at 12.45.

**Jordi Hays** (1:09)
The funny thing is I bet Gurman knows more about OpenAI's devices than we do because we specifically didn't want to be read in on anything device related because we knew there was going to be so much speculation. Then we just said like, yeah, we're going to be in the dark. We'll find out from the timeline.

**John Coogan** (1:27)
So at the center of the lawsuit is a former Apple employee named Chang Liu, who left for OpenAI and allegedly kept his Apple laptop for weeks after he left the company, downloaded proprietary Apple files and encouraged other Apple employees to do the same. Yeah, if that happened, that's a big no-no. When you leave a company, you got to leave your device. On the day you leave, usually, I was remembering back to... I mean, we had a very graceful transition to this business from Founders Fund, but I had emails in Founders Fund from people that went to Hereticon, people that would be good guests. And I was like, I'm not even going to export that. I'm just going to leave that and I'll reestablish those connections to people, cold email them, find their information independently. Just don't take any files, leave them with the other system.

**Jordi Hays** (2:12)
Standard practice.

**John Coogan** (2:13)
Yeah, it is standard practice.
Some people can make mistakes. Also, these are just allegations. None of this is confirmed. And this lawsuit will be going on for months, if not years. We can go through some of the other historical examples that are interesting to set the table on what might play out here. So Apple's filings also spends quite a few words on the fact that OpenAI has poached more than 400 employees from the company in recent years. That's not going to make anyone in Cupertino happy. They hate poaching. There's the famous Steve Jobs Adobe back and forth. Tang Tan left Apple in 2024 to co-found the AI hardware startup IO with Johnny Ive, which OpenAI acquired in 2025 as part of its consumer AI device effort. Tan is now OpenAI's chief hardware officer, and he's leading the consumer device effort there. In his lawsuit, Apple says Tan systemically solicited sensitive information from Apple employees who were interviewing for roles at OpenAI. A lot of perspective on this flying around the timeline, but Ben Thompson and Rolf Winkler in the Wall Street Journal both had interesting angles here.

**Jordi Hays** (3:16)
Wait, they have a Ben Thompson at the Wall Street Journal?

**John Coogan** (3:19)
No, no, no. Ben Thompson, extra techery, and Rolf, I said that wrong. Brandon got it correct in the newsletter. We can read a little bit of what Rolf said in the journal. He says, Apple's OpenAI suit echoes past attacks. Steve Jobs declared thermonuclear war. If you're trying to fire up your staff and you're going to battle, even if it's mundane, even if it's just for like, will the next device have 12 gigs of RAM or 32? That's boring. Thermonuclear war is exciting. You got to fire up the staff. So he declared, Steve Jobs declared thermonuclear war on Google's Android operating system in 2010, calling it a stolen product. Now his successor is going to battle against Apple's new most dangerous rival.
In one of his last acts, as Apple's chief executive before successor John Ternes takes over, Tim Cook fired a missile at OpenAI. In a lawsuit filed Friday, Apple allege that senior OpenAI executive, who once sat atop Apple's own product design team, was involved in a months-long campaign to steal Apple trade secrets. OpenAI replied at this point and said, we have no interest in Apple's trade secrets. But Ralph continues, he says, although it isn't clear yet what evidence the company has to back up all of its claims, the suit lands before OpenAI has released a product. And as the technology industry races to build artificial intelligence-powered devices that can move society beyond the smartphone era. And there's a whole debate to be had for where that goes and the value of devices in a world where the agents are just kind of off working and you can maybe just text them or send them a message on Telegram. There's a whole debate over what the, is the future of devices, more devices and different devices, or is it just no devices? But OpenAI has clearly been working on devices, we know from the IO acquisition. The winner could dominate the future just as Apple's iPhone ruled the consumer market for the last 20 years. Quote, I am not afraid of Apple, but I have tremendous, gotta flip to A6.