OpenAI reportedly compared its Apple deal to Google’s multi-billion-dollar search arrangement with Safari.
That framing matters more than it might seem, because OpenAI built its entire financial forecast around that comparison.
According to a report, the actual revenue has not come anywhere close to what that comparison implied.
Also: Apple’s latest CarPlay change lets Google Gemini answer questions Siri and Maps usually can’t handle
ChatGPT lives inside Siri, but it only responds when a user literally says the word “ChatGPT” out loud.
If you just ask Siri a question, ChatGPT sits there doing nothing. And even when it does respond, the answer that surfaces inside Siri is a stripped-down version of what you would get inside the actual ChatGPT app.
That is a pretty quiet way to showcase an AI partnership you were counting on for billions in revenue.
Also: Apple’s new Siri vision for iOS 27 is running into a problem the App Store was never built to handle
A Leap of Faith That Did Not Land
An OpenAI executive described being told to trust Apple without specifics on how the integration would work.
The exact quote: Apple said OpenAI needed to “take a leap of faith.” The same executive later called the deal a failure, adding that Apple had not made an honest effort to follow through on its side.
Part of the friction apparently stems from Apple’s famously closed internal culture. OpenAI claims it genuinely did not know how ChatGPT would be integrated into Apple’s products until after the decisions had already been made.
For a company that staked enormous subscription revenue projections on this partnership, going in with that much uncertainty looks, in hindsight, like a serious miscalculation on OpenAI’s part.
What OpenAI Might Actually Do About It
Renegotiation attempts have reportedly stalled. The options now being considered range from a formal breach-of-contract letter to a full lawsuit, though OpenAI still prefers to settle matters without going to court.
iOS 27 is expected to open Siri up to rival chatbots, including Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude. OpenAI is apparently not bothered by that.
The partnership was never exclusive, and a broader chatbot ecosystem inside Siri could actually give ChatGPT more visibility than it has right now.
The redesigned Siri interface rumored for iOS 27, with an extensions feature for third-party AI tools, might do more for ChatGPT’s reach than anything Apple has done since the original deal was signed.
