Abstract:
According to the Financial Times, the latest court documents reveal how the relationship between OpenAI and Apple gradually broke down. OpenAI said on Wednesday that its business with Apple to add AI capabilities to the iPhone through ChatGPT "performed well below expectations" after its launch in 2024.
OpenAI said its cooperation with Apple fell short of expectations
OpenAI said in a legal filing that the two companies reached an agreement in 2024 for ChatGPT to power "Apple Intelligence." However, Apple failed to stimulate iPhone users' interest in this AI feature, which disappointed OpenAI.
Apple is positioning itself as a potential "kingmaker" in the battle among AI developers to compete for more consumers. But in its first public comment on the collaboration, OpenAI said the integration of ChatGPT into millions of Apple devices would bring few practical benefits.
Since then, relations between two of Silicon Valley's most prominent companies have soured, culminating in a hostile trade secrets lawsuit filed by Apple. After an embarrassing two-year delay, Apple partnered with Google in January to use its Gemini model to power a completely rebuilt "Siri AI."
Court documents released on Wednesday stated that when the agreement was reached in 2024, OpenAI originally expected to create a "halo effect" through promotion and brand association with Apple, and hoped to obtain more subscriptions from Apple Intelligence users. But OpenAI said that a month after the ChatGPT integration function went online, the feature "seems to be off to a slow start" and OpenAI also lowered its forecast for the number of weekly active users. By the summer of 2025, "it became clear that Apple's integration of ChatGPT was performing well below expectations."
The document states that OpenAI executives are also worried that Apple will "want to move faster" to find another AI partner as soon as possible, thereby causing OpenAI to lose the opportunity to gain early access to Apple's billions of global users.
The court documents made public on Wednesday are part of a lawsuit filed in August 2025 by Musk's xAI (now merged into SpaceX). xAI questioned the cooperation agreement between Apple and OpenAI on antitrust grounds at the time. Apple settled the lawsuit with Musk last week, and OpenAI has filed a legal motion to disclose the terms of the settlement.
OpenAI claims that the integration with Apple does not unfairly enhance its market position, but coincides with a general decline in its market share as competitors such as Google, Anthropic, Meta and Grok are winning over users.
Comments