Apple's lawsuit couldn't come at a worse time for OpenAI

Apple's lawsuit couldn't come at a worse time for OpenAI

July 17, 2026 · 35 min

About this episode

The episode discusses Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI and its implications for the company's IPO and hardware ambitions.

Apple filed a trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI last Friday, and it's not messing around. The complaint alleges a pattern of misconduct reaching all the way up to OpenAI's chief hardware officer and claims more than 400 former Apple employees now work at the company. OpenAI's response so far has been carefully hedged, and the timing couldn't be worse with the company reportedly eyeing an IPO as early as later this year.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what the lawsuit could mean for OpenAI's own hardware ambitions and IPO timeline, plus a bigger theme running through the week's news: how much should anyone trust AI companies with their data?    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Why Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is warning enterprises about handing data over to AI labs, and whether open source is really a way out of the “Trojan horse” data-trust problem  How forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) are changing the relationship between AI labs and their enterprise…

People in this episode

Hosts: Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, Sean O'Kane

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Apple, OpenAI, General Catalyst

More episodes of Equity

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Equity podcast page.