2026-05-16 06:22:21
Never, ever a dull moment with OpenAI. And so with their big trial just wrapping up (see: below), it seems it was time to pick another fight. Oh boy I hope they know what they're doing here (I'm not sure they do)...
M.G. Siegler
Inklings is a newsletter featuring links and commentary from M.G. Siegler on timely topics found around the web.
⚖️ Closing Time for Elon v. OpenAI – The closing arguments have been made. The final quotes given (see: below). Jury deliberation starts on Monday. This is a good list of actual takeaways from the trial (and a good title!) by Elizabeth Lopatto. Is anything going to ultimately come from this – I mean, are we even going to get past the statute of limitations element? – beyond embarrassment for pretty much all involved? Directionally, very bad, you might say. Elon couldn't even be bothered to stick around to see it through to the end, instead taking off to China with his frenemy, the President of the United States. At least we'll always have the emails. And journal entries. [Verge]
🐦 Fall of the Twitter Clones – If nothing else, fun to read each of the companies try to respond to the data presented to them by Casey Newton that indicates their growth may not only be over, they may be in decline. They range from Meta giving their sort of typical condescending denial to Bluesky giving the friendly acknowledgment that growth has dropped, but not as bad as these numbers indicate. Regardless of the merit of the third-party numbers, certainly the trends are interesting and would seem to be backed up anecdotally by many. But the bigger point may be Casey's thought that while Bluesky and Threads may have successfully cloned Twitter to varying degrees, ultimately, it may not matter, as the time of text-based social networks is over. The social entertainment is now all video, all the time, while information is increasingly coming at us via AI-generated round-ups and push notifications. As for Twitter itself? It's now a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a space company. Bye, bye birdy. [Platformer 🔒]
🍪 Apple + Intel Details – While everyone knows that Apple has signed up to work with Intel, Ming-Chi Kuo seemingly has some details – including that the initial work has already kicked off for "low-end/legacy" chips for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. In other words, the cutting-edge chips will still be made by TSMC, but Intel will take up some of the older chip workload (pretty much as expected, though it wasn't entirely clear at first if Intel would just be used for tangential chips and not the main CPUs – but it will be the main CPUs, mostly for iPhones). Testing will happen this year, with a ramp in 2027 and 2028. TSMC will still handle "90% of supply share" but still, it's a huge validation for Intel's foundry, obviously. There is no bigger name than Apple. Well, there's maybe one bigger name now, and it's because of NVIDIA that Apple must diversify. Apple is no longer the dominant force in chips that can dictate everything... Who will be next to let Intel pick up some of their chip slack? [@mingchikuo]
💸 Anthropic at $900B+ – A real "changing of the guard" moment is upon us, it would seem. While Claude picked up a lot of usage momentum after DoD-Gate, and it seems like they may have passed OpenAI in terms of ARR (though yes, they measure it a bit differently), this would be the external validation. And really sort of wild given the gap between the two in terms of valuation just a year ago. That's how fast things can change in AI – just three months ago, the company raised at $350B. Presumably there's an intention to stay below the $1T mark ahead of any would-be IPO (though that clearly didn't matter to Elon Musk for SpaceX!). Sam Altman cannot be happy about the investor overlap here. Also, it seems like Google and Amazon squeezed their latest cash piles into the last round valuation just in the nick of time... [FT 🔒]
🔫 Amazon Casts the Woman Who Will Cast Bond – Nina Gold is touted as the woman who filled out Game of Thrones, but just as impressive – arguably more so – would be her work on The Crown. She also has done the past few Star Wars films, which are obviously problematic, but hardly for the casting choices. Sort of wild/fun that Amazon made a big to-do about this hire. I guess to calm rampant speculation (of which I'm guilty too) and to let everyone know the hunt is now truly underway. I'd guess we get an announcement this summer. [Variety]
"Mr Musk has tried to persuade you that his years-ago donations to OpenAI came with strings attached, strong enough to last for ever, to tie OpenAI in knots as it pursued its mission."
– Sarah Eddy, OpenAI's lawyer in her closing remarks to the jury. Strings to knots. Nice.
"Imagine that you’re on a hike, and you come upon one of those wooden bridges that you see on a trail, and it’s over a gorge. There’s a river that’s 100 feet below and it looks a little scary, but a woman standing by the entry to the bridge says, 'Don’t worry, the bridge is built on Sam Altman’s version of the truth.' Would you walk across that bridge? I don’t think many people would."
– Steve Molo, Elon Musk's lawyer in his closing remarks to the jury. A hike, with a wooden bridge, built on... Sam Altman's truth? Less nice.
The new Android 17 emoji look pretty good. Certainly better than before. And yes, definitely more iOS-like.
🎶 Listening to "Closing Time" by Semisonic
🍺 Enjoying a Camden Eazy Hazy IPA
🇬🇧 Sent from London, England
2026-05-15 18:34:13
Guys. It’s the last day of your big, highly-publicized and insanely-scrutinized trial against your former co-founder — who just happens to be the richest person in the world. Can you just, I don’t know, wait a while until you get into another high profile fight? Maybe a year? How about a month? Can we at least get a week breather? A few hours?
At this point, I think we have to recognize that OpenAI is going to be one of those companies that is simply always at war. They won’t need a “peacetime CEO” because there will never be peace. When one battle ends, the next begins. Elon Musk, the said co-founder. Anthropic, started by former OpenAI folks, of course. Microsoft, long the main benefactor. I mean, the entire company was basically founded to combat Google.
And now Apple.
Yes, OpenAI is at least thinking about legal action against the iPhone maker, reports Bloomberg. And The Financial Times. And The Information. And The New York Times. And undoubtedly others. Because it sure seems like OpenAI sources are willing to talk to anyone and everyone about such prospects. It's almost like they held an anonymous press conference on the matter. The sources include at least one OpenAI "executive" – albeit an unnamed one. Clearly, they are trying to send a message.
This is so wild that you almost have to wonder: has anyone at OpenAI ever met anyone at Apple before? This method of communication is not going to go over well in Cupertino. Why not just hurl a flaming bag of dog shit on to the steps of 1 Infinite Loop?
Here's Mark Gurman:1
Apple Inc.’s two-year-old partnership with OpenAI has become strained, according to people familiar with the matter, with the AI startup failing to see the expected benefits from the deal and now preparing possible legal action.
OpenAI lawyers are actively working with an outside legal firm on a range of options that could be formally executed in the near future, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private.
That could include sending the iPhone maker a notice alleging breach of contract without necessarily filing a full lawsuit at the outset, according to the people. OpenAI enlisted the outside firm in recent days to help with the situation.
Those deliberations are no longer private. So OpenAI better hope any contract they have in place with Apple is pretty ironclad. But the notion that they're merely thinking about sending Apple a notice about a breach of contract – and the fact that they're using this public negotiation maneuver – suggests that it may not be.
Per the reports, it sounds like OpenAI has been trying to rework their deal with Apple in recent months, but clearly such talks have gone nowhere. So they could sue, or threaten to sue, but floating that idea out there ahead of actually doing either... well, isn't the best look. OpenAI likely thinks appealing to the public – and perhaps politicians?2 – will help them here. Again, have they met Apple?
OpenAI believed that the companies’ partnership, which wove ChatGPT into Apple software, would coax more users into subscribing to the chatbot. It also expected deeper integration across more Apple apps and prime placement within the Siri assistant.
Instead, Apple’s use of OpenAI technology across its operating systems remains limited, and features can be hard to find.
“We have done everything from a product perspective,” said an OpenAI executive who asked not to be identified. “They have not, and worse, they haven’t even made an honest effort.”
I mean, can you sue someone for a deal not living up to expectations?3 I'm going to go ahead and guess that Apple's lawyers would not have agreed to terms that could possibly put them in such a position.
The real problem is that ChatGPT integration within Siri did ship and... it just sort of fell flat? That was certainly more on Apple because it was buried inside of Apple's famously problematic AI efforts. But I'm just not sure you can literally litigate such product decisions and failures. Was OpenAI promised very specific placement they didn't get? Were they promised some sort of minimum usage guarantees? There famously was no money explicitly changing hands in the deal, so was there some sort of revenue share guidance that was written down at some point? Again, hard to see how Apple would paper any of that.
The reality is that it sounds less like an Apple problem and more like one of sour grapes. Did the company flub their AI efforts to start? For sure. Did that hurt OpenAI? Perhaps – if AI on the iPhone was awesome, more usage would probably have equated to more ChatGPT usage. But we obviously can't know that for sure. I'm sympathetic to the expectations that OpenAI clearly had here (and perhaps Apple even shared) that this deal could have been a massive moment for ChatGPT, certainly for the subscription side, because I thought it would be too! It just didn't play out that way. And so perhaps OpenAI is trying to latch on to the lawsuit Apple just settled around advertising AI features that never shipped?
It's just far more likely that the partnership failed to live up to some loose and vague expectations – on both sides. Sure, that's undoubtedly more on Apple. They dashed OpenAI's hopes and dreams of a Google Search-like deal. But can I sue HBO over the final season of Game of Thrones?
It seems pretty clear that this is all timed to get ahead of WWDC in a few weeks. There, Apple is expected to formally unveil their new AI work, notably the new Siri, now powered by models distilled from Google's Gemini. And a range of new AI options, including integrations with Anthropic's Claude and perhaps any other AI service a user chooses to download. With the former, OpenAI would really like us to know they had no interested in that level of partnership:
OpenAI wasn’t interested in working with Apple on the new models because it felt burned by the initial relationship, according to the people. “Apple has so much market power that they can dictate terms,” the executive said. “We already took this leap of faith with you, and it didn’t work out well.”
Which is a weird statement because it reads more like they didn't like Apple's terms for such an arrangement more so than they were upset about the previous collaboration.
Then again, per earlier reporting (also from Gurman), Anthropic may have been Apple's preferred partner for their AI work after an internal "bake off", but terms were also the sticking point there. It's not clear if OpenAI was in second or third place in that scenario. They'd clearly like us to believe they were in second (or first!) but Apple would sure like us to believe that Google was in first, so...
As for the other app-based integration:
The OpenAI executive said that Apple’s embrace of other AI providers isn’t driving the company’s legal action since the partnership wasn’t meant to be exclusive from the start.
Which is also a funny statement because it reads like they're cool with that because they have to be, legally. That lack of exclusivity is undoubtedly something Apple papered!
To be fair, it does seem like the new "extension"-based integration for third-party AI providers could end up being better than the current situation, simply because it sounds like functionality and discovery will be less buried. And that means OpenAI could ultimately get out of Apple what they thought they were going to in their original deal. But yes, they'll have to battle Anthropic and others now.
Just for fun, let's go ahead and layer in a few more things.
First, Apple probably doesn't love the fact that OpenAI acquired the Jony Ive-founded io with the notion of building products that would break the chains that the iPhone has placed upon us. But they really can't love the fact that the team keeps poaching key Apple talent to help with such efforts.
And what if some of those people are also working on an actual iPhone competitor in the form of a phone, or a smartphone-like device?
I'm not saying that's the reason Apple may not have been as receptive to reworking any deal with OpenAI, but I'm saying that if there were such discussions, that dynamic probably didn't help matters!
As an aside: it seems a bit strange that Apple would even consider reworking their OpenAI deal when they must have known they were about to change the entire AI system, not only with Gemini, but with the aforementioned "extensions". Why bother? Unless OpenAI wanted more preferred placement for ChatGPT – which per above, they're saying they didn't. So perhaps that's the simple reason why Apple and OpenAI's discussions to "rework" their deal went nowhere?
Let's also remember that after the initial OpenAI agreement for iOS integration, Apple was said to be in talks to invest in a round of funding – which would have made sense – and potentially get a board observer role at the company! Microsoft may or may not have torpedoed that (and killed off their own such role in the process). And ongoing OpenAI turmoil at the time may or may not have killed off the investment itself. But again, the fact that this (allegedly) played out after that original agreement probably started the two sides down a rockier path than the one they set out upon.4
Two years ago, I was wondering if we might see Sam Altman (back!) on stage at WWDC to announce their partnership. It didn't happen, but ChatGPT certainly got prime placement there, if not exactly within iOS itself. This year, with this news, I think it's a question of if we'll hear anything about ChatGPT – still the leading consumer AI product and partner of Apple, after all – at all.
Jury deliberations start on Monday for the Musk/OpenAI trial. Hopefully they can wrap in time just in case OpenAI needs to start a new trial.5 One battle after another, indeed.
1 Leaking such news to Gurman hardly seems like an accident given his status as the preeminent Apple reporter. OpenAI is clearly aiming for the Apple audience while sending a message to the company. Again, I'm just not sure how wise of a strategy this is. Optically, it's fun though! Were the TBPN guys consulted on the strategy? ↩
2 One quote given to the FT stands out in this regard: "They are focused solely on extracting a tax for their market position" Someone alert Elizabeth Warren, pronto! ↩
3 The NYT's Mike Isaac smartly recalls the Square/Starbucks deal from over a decade ago that seemed like a massive win for the then-startup but ended up as a sort of disaster (and was killed in their IPO filing, no less!). As Isaac notes, no lawsuits were filed there... ↩
4 There's also some notion that Apple is not happy with OpenAI's privacy standards? Which was an aside in the Bloomberg piece, but obviously has long been a concern with such a deal... ↩
5 Perhaps Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers can oversee this one too, since she's now very familiar with both companies... ↩
2026-05-14 22:31:46
While I understand the attempt at an AI-first computer, there are a few strange things about the 'Googlebook' starting with the name on down. Of course, that could just be because much of it is TBD at the moment, perhaps related to Google IO kicking off next week. Still...
M.G. Siegler
Inklings is a newsletter featuring links and commentary from M.G. Siegler on timely topics found around the web.
🛍️ Amazon.com Adds Alexa – I never fully understood why Amazon created a separate brand/product for augmenting their core shopping experience with AI. I guess (and guessed) it was to be able to experiment with 'Rufus' while at the same time, the earlier versions of Alexa may not have been up to ruff snuff – especially if you're going to be putting it in front of millions of people instantly. With Alexa+ now ready and rolling (out), it's seemingly time see if Amazon's AI can be used to buy the big boy pants. And presuming it works (Rufus has gotten much better over time in my own usage), this could help Alexa itself, giving Amazon an advantage in the all-important AI commerce – and eventually agentic commerce, space. [Verge]
🎥 AI as a Filmmaking Tool – You can put Peter Jackson in the James Cameron camp with AI. That is, rather than freaking out about it, simply viewing it as yet another tool to leverage (or not) when it comes to making movies. It is interesting how the camps at least somewhat seem to be dividing between filmmakers who favor special effects versus those who favor practical effects... I'm not saying AI is simply the new CGI, but well, Jackson is with: "It's no different from any other special effect." He goes on to note that he's not talking about AI in general, and that he's obviously in favor of IP and identity rights. But again, it's just the common sense: if you can leverage something to better fulfill your vision as a filmmaker, why wouldn't you do that? Because people aren't as involved as they are in say, stop-motion filmmaking? What is the cut off line we're drawing here, and why? To save jobs? Jobs have been going away in Hollywood for years, long before AI came around. There will be new jobs to leverage the new tools, just as is always the case. Also, if and when fully AI-generated movies come, I suspect once the novelty wears off, very few people will want to watch them. And the human-created ones (perhaps augmented by some AI tools) will rise in value. [THR]
📉 Is Microsoft Now Undervalued? – The company has just sunk below $3T in market cap. They're $2.6T behind NVIDIA and Amazon is about to overtake them to push them into the 5th most valuable company in the world spot. About a year ago, I made the case that Google was severely undervalued relative to their parts. The company was at $2T back then – ahem – now they're at $4.8T. Microsoft's story is a bit different since their parts are a bit more downtrodden at the moment (Xbox, LinkedIn, etc). Still, it's hard to argue with their continued results, quite literally. And with that 25%+ stake in OpenAI. If they can actually figure out AI on their own, obviously the stock will bounce back. But Wall Street is clearly also skeptical of that at the moment and the massive CapEx spend. (They're also obviously skeptical of Apple and AI, but with next-to-no-spend, they're near an all-time high at $4.4T.) Are activists going to start circling like they did at the end of the Steve Ballmer era? No one is going to force Nadella out, but might they force some spin-outs? [Information 🔒]
M.G. Siegler
"OpenAI is Coke, Anthropic is Pepsi and Grok is RC Cola. I never really saw people drinking it."
– Ben Pouladian, an engineer and investor, on the notion that growth at Grok, xAI's chatbot, has stalled. While the racy stuff may have worked for a bit, I wonder what percentage of usage is directly tied to X, and even more specifically people asking it to fact-check tweets (something which Meta is on the verge of copying with Threads, as is their way).
While forcing banks currying favor ahead of an IPO to use it is certainly one strategy, that's not really scalable either (nor does that appear to really be working). So what gets Grok back into the race? Anything? Simply throwing money seemed to work at first, then didn't. Maybe tying it directly to Cursor if/when they complete that full deal?
Below, members of The Inner Ring will find thoughts on:
• Who Is Winning Elon v. OpenAI?
• OpenAI's $7B Man With His Own AI Lab
2026-05-14 02:32:35
First, can we talk about the name? 'Googlebook'.
I really, really don't understand why you unveil a product that is clearly going to be marketed around its AI capabilities with a name that's associated with the historic web search capabilities. Yes, Google is an entire company that obviously now does far more than Search, but most would still associate the word with such functionality – it's the "Kleenex" of that industry! A verb! When I hear 'Googlebook' I don't think, "oh nice, a new AI product." I think, "is it some kind of new Search hardware?" Or worse, I immediately think of Google+ – this sounds like what we used to joke the name of Google's Facebook competitor would be!
Wait, isn't there also another product called Google Books? Yes, yes there is. Google, you have a major SEO problem here. Also, will the universe collapse upon itself if you access Google Books on Googlebooks?
It also, of course, sort of sounds like "Gobbledygook". I'll go ahead and use the definition that Gemini pulls up: "language that is nonsense, overly technical, or confusing." Sounds about right here. I do sort of like the paired 'o' parallels on either side of the name – some mild '007' vibes – but it's sort of a ridiculous mouthful of a name. Yes, 'Google' itself is famously nonsensical and fun, but pairing it with another 'oo' word conveys baby speak a bit too much?
Obviously they must have debated it, but again, given the AI element, I would have gone with 'Geminibook'. It's still a mouthful, and a bit bland. But they could have had some fun and styled it as 'GeminiBook' – evoking Apple's old 'iBook' branding.
Even more fun? 'aiBook'! But that may have actually drawn a lawsuit from Apple. Though I'm not sure how much they could have done there? But since they're partners in AI now, perhaps best not to poke that bear...
'Chromebook Gemini'? Sort of lame, but more straightforward? Follows the 'Chromebook Pixel' since-discontinued branding convention. Then again, the intention is to break away from just being about Chrome – and specifically ChromeOS – here, clearly.
That points to another oddity here. They apparently don't yet have a name for the OS these machines will be running? It's clearly the ChromeOS/Android hybrid that has long been rumored (and slightly leaked) as "AluminumOS", but I guess the branding team was exhausted after coming up with 'Googlebook'. Which is sort of funny because if I think of ChromeOS + Android, I might actually think 'GoogleOS' makes some sense there! It's famously Google's two OSes, combined!
Or how about this: 'gOS'? Again, Apple might be annoyed (though not as much as they would be about AiOS!), but it would allow Google to not only leverage the above but rope in Gemini too!
Maybe there is still hope for one of those. Maybe they're just saving it for the actual IO conference next week? We'll see!
Anyway, with 500-ish words about the branding out of the way, the device itself makes sense at the highest level. This is the AI PC that Microsoft tried to do with 'Copilot+ PCs' (I take back everything bad I said about your branding, Google), but done right. Well, maybe. But hopefully as it's Google, not Microsoft. The latter I thought also had some correct high-level ideas around trying to reconstitute Windows and PCs in general around AI, unfortunately, their execution has been... sub-par. Which is a nice way of saying "shit".
In fact, they've had a few "oh shit" moments with the big attempt to push the 'AI PC' movement. First there were some major security concerns (par for the course for Microsoft). Then there were some major gaming concerns (par for the course for Microsoft). Then there were some major OS bloat concerns (par for the course for Microsoft). Now they're slowly but surely pulling back Copilot from every possible surface (and Surface), having annoyed their users to death.
It just feels like Google can't possibly do worse? And that's not to mention the fact that Gemini, the AI products and models, are actually solid. How they'll productize them into a full laptop experience remains to be seen, but the technological capabilities will be there, clearly.
And one of the main new elements they're touting right now is "Magic Pointer" – basically bestowing AI magic upon the old standard mouse cursor. Others have tried to use the text cursor (or caret) to this end. It's a good idea, but hasn't really caught on. The mouse cursor is arguably more interesting because it's how you digitally point at something. It's risky because there are going to be some real UX concerns in messing with such a standard, only for one type of device/OS. But it's certainly worth trying if you're Google.
It's sort of taking the 'Circle to Search' idea from mobile and porting it over. But it goes further too, as some fun early demos showcase. Performance issues aside (as they're running remotely), it does feel like a natural way to say, manipulate an image. Just point at the an area with your cursor and say "put a bird on it".
And it should help bridge the gap between mobile and desktop as touch becomes more ubiquitous across all devices – even MacBooks at some point soon! This is just a more natural way of doing some things than using a text prompt, obviously.
As for Chromebooks. Google wants to make it clear that they're not going anywhere – touting 60%+ of the US education market – but they also clearly were never able to make them robust enough to challenge MacBooks, or the higher end Windows laptops. Again, they tried with the Pixel model, but ultimately Chromebooks found their place at the lower-end of the market, and environments like schools where most of what you need is in the web browser.
Oh yes, and the MacBook Neo is coming for that market. Hard.
For many other types of users, ChromeOS could just never quite cut it. I tried using a Chromebook Pixel as my main machine once – I lasted about a week. I don't know if the ability to also run Android apps helps with that since those apps are obviously going to be tailored for phones (and I guess some for tablets), but it probably can't hurt? Again, unless it adds more complexity from a UX perspective. Hard to say for sure right now, as the focus is pretty clearly on the hardware here.
And beyond the high-level notion of what the devices are, there are not many more details. This chat with Google VP John Maletis gets at some – notably, that there will apparently be chips from Intel and Qualcomm – so x86 and ARM-based chips? Queue the scary flashbacks to the early days of Microsoft Surface. Are we going to get a 'Googlebook RT'?
And while Dell, Lenovo, HP, ASUS, and Acer are all on board (which Microsoft can't love, obviously), Samsung, Google's key partner on Android itself, is nowhere to be found... Also not being discussed: will Google itself make Googlebooks? The "nothing to share" comments sound a lot like "yes". So yes, there will likely be 'Google Googlebooks' alongside 'Dell Googlebooks' and the like.
With that, we're right back where we started, in branding territory. 'Googlebook' is going to take some getting used to. Then again, it's not really a product for me. Or maybe it is. I'm intrigued by an AI-first laptop, of course. But I was also intrigued by a browser-first laptop back in the day. Ultimately, it just wasn't enough. Will Googlebook be? Way too many TBDs to know right now.
One more thing: I do like the notion of the 'Glowbar' being the unifying design element to showcase what is a Googlebook and what is not. The Chromebook Pixel had something similar, and it was nice. It obviously called back to the old glowing Apple logo that used to be ubiquitous across classrooms until Apple turned off the lights, quite literally. I'm guessing Google is hoping you'll start seeing those 'Glowbars' pop up, announcing themselves in a similar manner. Though it could be cool if they actually did something beyond glow? Perhaps indicating when Gemini is working? Though that takes my mind immediately to Cylons...
2026-05-13 19:03:30
There's something that has long annoyed me about the way Panos Panay answers questions. This dates to his Microsoft days and continues into his Amazon days. He often does this thing where he tries to turn the table on the questioner by acknowledging what they're getting at, trying to seem like he's being direct, but it's really just a form of misdirection. I'd find it decidedly less disingenuous to simply give an "I'm not going to answer that" – you know, the Apple way.
Anyway, this long FT interview seemingly almost lulls Panay into giving an actual answer. Not quite, but he seemingly reveals enough that's interesting. I speak, specifically, about "Transformer", the codename of Amazon's rumored new "phone" project. After Panay dances around the notion of new devices and form-factors that Amazon is thinking about and/or playing around with internally (which, as he notes, sometimes leads to "rumors"), Rafe Rosner-Uddin comes right at him:
What sort of device will you come forward with? Will it be a phone? And will people sacrifice their iPhone for an Amazon phone? Is that a surface area that you even want to play in given how competitive it is? Amazon’s Fire phone wasn’t a success and you tried to bring mobile back at Microsoft with the Surface Duo.
At first, Panay tries to pump the brakes with his verbal roundabouts, but then he sort of stumbles into perhaps revealing something by trying not to directly answer the question:
Here’s what I’d say: it’s just not the goal. I know there’s a lot of rumours out there.
I don’t think the phone form factor is going away anytime soon. I’ve said that publicly. I keep saying it. I always get asked, ‘so the phone’s gone, right?’ Absolutely not. The phone’s not going anywhere. However, I think the phone is going through some transformation, and will continue to do so over the next 10 years, for sure.
I think your black and white question is, are you going after a phone? A lot of people want me to say no, but a lot of people want me to say yes, I get it. Here’s my take: it’s not necessarily [that] we’re going after a phone, no.
There’s no clear path that makes sense. You just said it, there’s so many new form factors that are important that need to be focused on. It’s a tricky question. If I black and white say no, I would say that was accurate. But I also think it’s misleading.
There's a seemingly fairly easy way to read between those many lines: Amazon is not working on a device that looks exactly like the iPhone or the latest smartphones from Samsung or Google, but they are perhaps exploring devices that would essentially fill that role (and hole) in your life.
It's all a bit silly. Is the iPhone really a phone? I mean, technically yes, but that specific functionality is arguably the least interesting aspect of the device. It's really just a computer. For the past 15 years running, the most portable computer. As a result, this has made it the main hub of both our computing lives, but also arguably and increasingly our lives in general. That hub status is what Amazon – and everyone else – would clearly love to capture. Who cares if it's a phone?
As Panay notes, there's really no obvious inroad to disrupt the iPhone at the moment. As it turned out, there also wasn't back when Amazon shipped the Fire Phone or when Facebook went down the phone path as well. Microsoft too under Panay!
As he continues:
One of the most incredible parts of the culture here is the willingness to make a big bet when you need to. And the question is, when do you need to? Well, what’s the right thing for the customer over time? There’s always opportunity, but right now, no.
What I won’t ever do again is [go to the customer and say] here’s another phone. What do you think? There’s no point. We know what customers need right now.
That might suggest that Amazon will come at consumers first with a tangential device – or devices. Things that perhaps work with the current crop of phones. This makes sense and it's seemingly the same gameplan that OpenAI is exploring with their Jony Ive-led device – or devices. Meta as well because again, they don't have a phone, so what choice do they have? But all of these players, assuming they see some level of success with any sort of newfangled AI-first devices – far from a given, obviously – will almost necessarily want to break free from the chains of Apple (or Samsung, Google, etc).
That's undoubtedly why Panay doesn't want to full-on reject the notion. Amazon may indeed come out with something that may not look exactly like the iPhone, but will serve largely the same purpose. Again, a hub for your computing life.
Panay notes a few times in the interview that right now he views the home as such a hub. And that's obviously because that's where Amazon has a foothold thanks to millions of Alexa devices sold over the years. With many (but not all) of those now (finally) being upgraded to Alexa+, this is a potential strength for Amazon, certainly versus Apple, which has a far smaller footprint with the HomePod, and their latest attempts to enter the home have been delayed along with the revamped Siri.1
So can Amazon figure out a way to bridge the home to mobile? Maybe. And as Rosner-Uddin smartly follows up with, perhaps it's Amazon Leo, their newly rebranded but still not operational satellite internet project aimed to compete with Starlink. If Amazon can turn that effort into a true consumer-scale offering, the sky is quite literally the limit. That suddenly flips them from being beholden to Apple to Apple potentially being beholden to them – they already are, in a small way now thanks to Amazon's GlobalStar deal!
Anyway, yeah, sure, Amazon is not building a phone. But they're also not not building a phone. Because it may not be a phone as we've typically thought of a phone. But the phones we now have are long from being thought of typically as phones. They'll probably start with devices that work with existing computing hubs – i.e. the iPhone – but they'll eventually aim to create something that can become that hub itself. Perhaps connected via their own satellite service.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Just as Amazon had to delay Alexa+ before rebooting the efforts – something Panay talks a bit about, but is also clearly disingenuous about with "I don’t know if it was already really in flight." Come on... ↩
2026-05-12 20:55:31
My god, it's full of quotes. Between the testimony and all the discovery in the Elon Musk vs. OpenAI trial, as you might expect, there are a lot of juicy tidbits. But the direct quotes are truly impressive. So far, my favorite has to be Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, on the witness stand, giving his assessment of the OpenAI board when they decided to remove Sam Altman as CEO (aka "The Blip"): "It was amateur city as far as I’m concerned."
Not amateur hour, mind you.1 That would be just a brief moment in time. This was a whole metropolis of amateurs running amok. Mucking up Microsoft's investment.
To me, it's sort of a perfect encapsulation of the situation and it perhaps speaks to the broader one in Silicon Valley. Because these startups are now valued at billions, or tens of billions, or hundreds of billions – or even potentially trillions – there's an assumption from the outside looking in that these are well-oiled machines of industry being run by professionals that themselves are execution machines.
Yeah, no. That's not how it works. Anyone who has lived and/or worked in that world knows this all too well, but this trial is exposing such sausage to all.
It is, indeed, amateur city.
Not across the board, of course. Certainly the mature companies often do run like well-oiled machines that keep printing profits even if and when hiccups occur. Just look at all of Big Tech for examples of that. Apple flubs AI to start? No matter, the iPhone will just keep selling. Google too? All good, their myriad other businesses will quite literally buy them time. Amazon needs longer to get Alexa+ fully baked? You're going to keep shopping and businesses will keep using AWS. Meta quite literally can't buy a hit any longer? No matter, the ads will just keep being served. Even Microsoft itself keeps switching Copilots trying to find one to steer the AI business. But it doesn't matter to the actual top and bottom line. At least not so far.
But startups are a different beast, of course. They're most often going to be immature from both a company and leadership perspective. That's not necessarily a knock on the individuals – though sometimes it is! – it's just the nature of the business. Again, such imperfections can be masked by the massive valuations placed on the companies by investors. And in the Age of AI, such numbers not only can surpass those of actually mature companies, they oftendwarf them. This again leads to a natural assumption that they're more mature than they actually are.
The truth is that it's hard to grow up in a period of intense growth, as paradoxical as that may sound. Because everything is moving so fast and constantly evolving, it's unrealistic, if not impossible, for a company's roots to take hold. Anything that appears settled can be uprooted at any moment. Experience helps, and perhaps matters most when it comes to a company maturing faster. But clearly OpenAI was growing at such an unprecedented rate that immaturity ruled the day and the company.
That all came to a head in "The Blip". And it clearly wasn't just the OpenAI board, as Nadella is suggesting. As the texting, emails, testimony, and um, journal entries, make clear, everyone was operating on the fly. From Sam Altman to Greg Brockman to Ilya Sutskever to Mira Murati and seemingly everyone else on down – and up, to the board. (And yes, the whole non-profit element probably didn't help matters here!) Honestly, even the exchanges within Microsoft in the early days of their partnership with OpenAI betray a fairly humorous lack of understanding of what they were all dealing with – though yes, with at least a bit more corporate maturity!
And even Elon Musk, an entrepreneur with perhaps more experience than anyone when it comes to starting and running companies, was clearly bowled over by the immaturity of the operation. And yes, that included some of his own immaturity. Perhaps a lot.
In a way, this trial brings to mind my favorite part of Steve Jobs' famous 2005 Stanford commencement speech: "Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you."
Now, "smarter" is perhaps too loaded a term when it comes to AI given both the nature of the technology and the expertise required to build it. But as with all things in life, there are trade-offs.2 Jobs' point was simply that everything out there that you see and read about and perhaps admire is not built by infallible gods, but by people. Individuals full of flaws with hampers full of dirty laundry. And this trial highlights that.
People can be immature. People can be insecure. People can be jealous. People can be deceptive. People can be messy. People can be complicated. And it's people that start and run companies. At least until the AI gets good enough.
So yeah, OpenAI was "amateur city" – as are most startups. The difference is that most startups haven't historically been given billions upon billions of dollars with the assumption that such money would instantly make them more professional. It doesn't work that way. At least not at first. Such things take time, and mistakes, and headaches.3
In that way, it is Microsoft who may have actually misread the situation. And while it's hard to argue with the result of their investment – at least on paper – there are other results of that partnership that they've clearly grown less keen about and have moved to distance themselves from, professionally.
Let's end with another Nadella quote, this one from an internal note to his executive team in 2022 ahead of a fresh $10B investment into OpenAI – their last major one: "I don’t want to be IBM and OpenAI to be Microsoft."
Spoken like a mature company and leader operating in a professional city...
One more thing: the other thought that immediately popped into my head upon reading Nadella's quote was actually a song. Quite naturally, Guns N' Roses' 1987 "Paradise City". Did you know it was written while the band was together on a tour bus back from... the Bay Area? Fun lyrics too:
Rags and riches, or so they say, you gotta
Keep pushing for the fortune and fame
You know it's all a gamble when it's just a game
You treat it like a capital crime
Everybody's doing their time
1 Though yes, my best guess would be that Nadella slightly flubbed the common phrase – to the point where many stories misquoted him assuming he had said that version and not actually "amateur city" which both AI and a web search will tell you is best known as a "seminal lesbian mystery novel by Katherine V. Forrest" published in 1984. I'm going to assume that's not what Nadella was referring to... ↩
2 My own belief remains that "smarts" matters less than determination with startups. Which I know sounds like a "winning thing" to say, but I actually think it often goes quite dark. Those willing to be the most ruthless in business often win. You have to be okay with being ruthless, which many are not... But many are smart. That's not enough. ↩
3 It's honestly sort of surprising that the company not only hasn't come apart during the endless turmoil, but has thrived. Perhaps that just speaks to the opportunity here... ↩