Good morning, {{ first_name | AI enthusiasts }}. Tech giants poach talent all the time, especially in the AI world. But Apple says some of the 400+ (!) employees OpenAI has hired away came bundled with something extra: hardware secrets.
A new lawsuit from Apple makes that case against its former Siri partner and is asking the court to send the company’s unreleased, Jony Ive-designed hardware back to the drawing board as a result.
In today’s AI rundown:
Apple takes OpenAI's hardware push to court
The Rundown Roundtable: Our AI use cases
Go from idea to website with ChatGPT Work + Codex
AI 2027 team drafts humanity's Plan A
4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
OPENAI & APPLE
Image source: Images 2.0 / The Rundown
The Rundown: Apple just filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, its hardware chief Tang Tan, and its io devices unit, alleging they turned an Apple poaching spree into a pipeline for confidential hardware theft while calling for a redesign of the lab’s unreleased device.
The details:
Apple says it flagged the suspected theft in a February letter and heard nothing back, and that more than 400 of its former employees now work at the lab.
Hardware chief Tang Tan, who joined OAI after 24 years at Apple, allegedly ran interviews where candidates were told to come with 'actual parts'.
Ex-iPhone engineer Chang Liu is accused of using a bug to gain confidential files after joining OAI, texting a colleague that the access was 'so funny.'
OAI said it has “no interest in other companies' trade secrets” and “remains focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere."
Why it matters: If there were questions about where OAI and Apple’s relationship stood, this would appear to clear things up. With OAI’s Jony Ive-led (also Apple’s old designer) device expected in 2027, a courtroom battle with an ugly paper trail could complicate things — and give Apple more time to prepare for big competition.
TOGETHER WITH STRANDS AGENTS
The Rundown: Strands Agents is the open-source agent harness SDK from AWS, powering everything from production backends to physical robots to code that writes itself. Build production-ready agents in a few lines of code, with any model, anywhere.
Inside the SDK, you'll find:
Context management, execution limits, and observability before you write a line of config
Hooks to monitor, modify, and debug
100% agent accuracy with steering
THE RUNDOWN ROUNDTABLE
Image source: Ben / The Rundown
The Rundown: The Rundown Roundtable is a weekly feature where we poll members of The Rundown staff about how we use AI in our work and daily lives.
Ben, Content Team: As a hobby and non-work-related creative outlet, I've started to write and create YouTube videos about retro football (soccer) stories. Part of the visuals are vintage stickers of the players mentioned. This used to be a time-intensive Google/eBay search when looking for 20+ players at a time.
So I used Claude to build a 'Sticker Search' tool. It allows me to add the player, season, and team and find their sticker from that year. With one click, I can download it to my working folder.
Jamie, Growth: I created an automation that watches the Claude Code changelog, filters out minor bug fixes, and uses Remotion to create a "New in Claude Code" video programmatically.
Then it generates a video script and reads it using ElevenLabs audio, helping me stay up to date on new Claude features as they come out. It’s been a real-time saver.
AI TRAINING
The Rundown: In this guide, you'll learn how to turn a website idea into a working prototype using the new ChatGPT Work and Codex app (which uses the new GPT-5.6 models).
Step-by-step:
Update the ChatGPT desktop app. You'll know it's ready when ChatGPT Work appears in the top left. Click ChatGPT Work or Codex to toggle modes
Create a project folder and start a task there. Give ChatGPT your directory idea, ask it to plan the Astro.js build, then save a one-page PRD in the folder
When the PRD is ready, ask Work to task sub-agents with researching directory items. Open a new thread, switch to Codex, point it at the PRD, and ask it to build with sub-agents
Open the preview and ask Codex to fix the biggest visible issue. We used a Nintendo Switch directory, but this works for any directory
Pro tip: If Sites is available in your app, tell Codex to publish the finished site using the Sites skill. OpenAI will deploy and host it for you.
PRESENTED BY AWS
The Rundown: Long-lived agent credentials are a breach waiting to happen. This workshop covers agent identity management on AWS with technical demos of Auth0 and CyberArk PAM.
Join and learn how to:
Scope time-bounded tokens that expire per action with AWS Security Token Service
Configure automatic secret rotation with AWS Secrets Manager
Trace each API call to identity, session, and task with AWS CloudTrail
AI RESEARCH
Image source: AI 2040
The Rundown: The AI Futures Project, the nonprofit behind AI 2027, just released AI 2040, a new stress-test of five scenario forecasts of how the AI race may play out over the next decade, ranging from light-touch regulation to a global research halt.
The details:
The project tests five routes from the same 2029 fork, spanning a full-speed AI race, unilateral delay, confrontation, cooperation, and a global halt.
The recommended Plan A has the U.S. and China pausing frontier training in 2029, with expanded global chip tracking and research opened to public view.
Former OAI researcher and co-author Daniel Kokotajlo said he predicts “companies won't like it" due to the needed transparency from top labs.
The earlier AI 2027 scenario, where the race ends in extinction or a single power grab, reached U.S. VP JD Vance, who said: "I'm worried about this stuff."
Why it matters: Regardless of your stance on acceleration vs. shutdown, AI 2040 is very well-thought out — and worth clicking through the choose-your-own-adventure paths. Nobody knows how the next decade of AI plays out, but projections from those who've been on the inside are often some of the best attempts at mapping it.
QUICK HITS
🤖 Adapt - The leading Slack-native AI coworker. Fully integrated with your business and gets real, high-ROI work done.*
🌞 GPT-5.6 Sol - OpenAI's new flagship model release
⚙️ Runway Dev - New API for Runway's media models and real-time avatars
🗣️ GPT-Live - OpenAI’s new SOTA, more natural voice model
*Sponsored Listing
OpenAI's CEO of AGI deployment, Fidji Simo, is moving to part-time advisor due to a chronic illness, saying “curing disease is the most important thing AI could accomplish.”
Meta removed Muse Image's tag-to-remix feature after major backlash, admitting it "missed the mark" by opting every public Instagram account into AI edits by default.
OpenAI Head of Safety Johannes Heidecke is reportedly leaving the company, coming on the heels of chief futurist Joshua Achiam’s departure last week.
Runway introduced Runway Dev, a new single API serving its frontier video models alongside a third-party image and audio generator.
OpenAI published an AI-generated proof of a 50-year-old unsolved math problem, with its day-old GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra creating 64 subagents to solve it in under an hour.
COMMUNITY
Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.
Today’s workflow comes from reader Claire H. in Fort Collins, CO:
“I am a recently graduated high school senior, and about six months ago my dad helped me open my first stock brokerage account. Every month, I put in $50 from my own earnings.
A few months in, I was spending 30 minutes to an hour each month researching the stocks and ETFs I was invested in. So I began my first and most impactful project with Claude Cowork: a document it creates for me automatically each month, with a market overview, how my own stocks have changed, a 'Concept of the Month' where Claude teaches me a new investment term, and a $50 recommendation.
This change, which took me 5 minutes to set up, has saved me 30 minutes every month researching and calculating, and more importantly: I am actually learning, all while staying up-to-date with the current market.”
How do you use AI? Tell us here.
Read our last AI newsletter: OpenAI sends GPT 5.6 to Work
Read our last Tech newsletter: Netflix’s binge model is backfiring
Read our last Robotics newsletter: Ex-Tesla scientist’s faceless humanoid
Today’s AI tool guide: Go from idea to website with ChatGPT Work + Codex
RSVP to next workshop on July 17: Get knowledge work done with GPT 5.6
That's it for today!
See you soon,
Rowan, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown
