GoKawiilApple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, has been added as a document custodian in xAI’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI. Here’s what that means.
A bit of background
Last year, Elon Musk accused Apple and OpenAI of working together to prevent competing LLMs from succeeding in the App Store, sparking a lawsuit that now also involves the super app market.
In the lawsuit, xAI (which is now part of SpaceX) claims that Apple’s deal with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into Siri has been influencing App Store rankings.
Apple has repeatedly denied these accusations, taking particular issue with xAI’s characterization that the company’s deal with OpenAI involves exclusivity, which it does not.
Over the past few months, xAI has tried to broaden discovery in the lawsuit, including by seeking documents from foreign companies under the Hague Convention.
While the US court has granted these requests, they haven’t been as successful abroad. In January, South Korea rejected its bid to obtain documents from Kakao, the company behind one of the country’s major super apps. Similar requests are pending in other countries.
Federighi added to xAI’s lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI
This week, the case’s discovery got broadened once again when the court granted xAI’s request to add Craig Federighi as a custodian but denied the same request for Tim Cook:
Here, Plaintiffs argue both Cook and Federighi “made high-level, strategic decisions about the Apple-OpenAI Agreement.” Plaintiffs have sufficiently met this standard as to Federighi. They argue that Federighi may have unique relevant evidence not already produced relating to Apple’s integration of OpenAI into Apple Intelligence, because as Senior Vice President of Software Engineering he likely was a key decision maker regarding Apple’s software development. However, Plaintiffs have not made this showing as to Cook. Plaintiffs do not explain how Cook is likely to have any unique relevant evidence that was not already produced, or that designating Federighi as a custodian would not provide. Accordingly, the Court GRANTS in part Plaintiffs request, and designates Craig Federighi as a custodian. Apple shall provide responsive discoverable documents in Federighi’s possession by June 17, 2026.
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