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OpenAI’s ambitions to build a hardware rival to the iPhone are already running into trouble because of Apple’s trade secret lawsuit, according to Apple. Bloomberg<\/em>Mark Gurman, who says the damage is well known before any court decision.<\/p>\n Apple sued OpenAI last week, accusing the company of pressuring former employees, even people it was trying to hire, to provide information about unreleased products. The lawsuit also alleges that OpenAI trained new hires on how to avoid Apple security checks without an interview using a document tied to former iPhone design chief Tang Tan. Apple is asking the court to order OpenAI to stop the alleged misconduct, destroy any proprietary material it has acquired, and pay damages.<\/p>\n A court decision could take years, Gurman said, but he says the case is doing damage now, stifling OpenAI’s ability to recruit and create traction long before a judge weighs in. OpenAI declined to discuss its hardware roadmap directly, though in response to the suit the company said it “doesn’t care about other companies’ trade secrets” and remains focused on its own conduct.<\/p>\n The level of talent attraction is a big part of why this is important to Apple. More than 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI, including former Apple design chief Jony Ive, and Gurman says the company poached so much from Apple’s iPhone product design team that Apple had to rebuild parts of the team. Apple responded with huge retention bonuses and managers working hard to keep developers from leaving.<\/p>\n The trade secret situation has apparently become one of Apple’s biggest internal concerns over the past few months, ranking alongside tax exposure and the ongoing memory chip shortage. In its court filings, Apple classifies the case as being about trade secrets and describes OpenAI’s hardware business as nascent, arguing that discovery is necessary to expose “the widespread theft of Apple’s trade secrets.”<\/p>\n The lawsuit is said to already be restructuring OpenAI’s employment, regardless of what the court ultimately decides. Apple employees who are considering moving to OpenAI may now think twice given the increased scrutiny, and even discussion there may draw the attention of Apple’s security team, which could keep more engineers at Apple and slow down the flow of institutional information to OpenAI.<\/p>\n Former Apple employees will likely grow more cautious about discussing past work, with executives avoiding technical questions that risk touching Apple’s confidential information. New legal reviews, tighter internal controls, and compliance training may pull developers away from real development, while OpenAI’s senior leadership spends time on acquisitions and investments.<\/p>\n Given Apple’s power over consumer electronics manufacturers in Asia, suppliers may be reluctant to deepen ties with OpenAI for fear of risking a large, long-standing relationship with Apple or being sued themselves. <\/p>\n Bloomberg Intelligence<\/em> wrote that “Apple is likely to secure the first targeted aid associated with the OpenAI device effort.” Any such order would require that disputed hardware be isolated, evidence preserved, and compliance ensured, which would further delay OpenAI’s hardware initiatives. In the long run, if Apple can prove that its trade secrets have made it into OpenAI’s products, OpenAI could be forced to redesign them.<\/p>\n Still, a person familiar with OpenAI’s plans told Gurman that the company still expects to announce its first hardware product this year and release it in 2027, though that could change as OpenAI revises Apple’s claims. That device is reportedly a long way off, but it forms a wider family of products, sort of Bloomberg<\/em> previously defined as the medium of OpenAI device ambitions, it will be very difficult. OpenAI has reportedly tested categories that include smart speakers and wearables with an iPhone-style device as an end goal, but a simple, non-phone product is expected to ship first.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" OpenAI’s ambitions to build a hardware rival to the iPhone are already running into trouble because of Apple’s trade secret lawsuit, according to Apple. BloombergMark Gurman, who says the damage is well known before any court decision. Apple sued OpenAI last week, accusing the company of pressuring former employees, even people it was trying to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16194,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-deals"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16195,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16193\/revisions\/16195"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}