☕️ OpenAI fires back at Apple

Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Techpresso.

In today's Techpresso:

💥 OpenAI fires back at Apple

📊 Bending Spoons buys Airtable for $1.3B

🍎 Apple plans iPhone-Windows copy-paste

🇺🇸 US drafts ban on Chinese data gear

🏛️ White House says its AI framework is done

Plus: 🎁 14 other news you might like, 🧰 6 tools, and 📚 5 papers.

💥 OpenAI fires back at Apple LINK

OpenAI is fighting back against Apple's lawsuit over stolen trade secrets, publishing chat messages it says prove Apple's own staff kept contacting former colleague Chang Liu for technical help after he left for OpenAI.

The messages show Apple employees asking Liu for assessments and schematics, and adding him to a group chat where he pointed to internal folders before writing, "this is highly irregular, please remove me from this thread."

OpenAI also says Apple's outside lawyer emailed the wrong person after confusing two Asian last names and falsely claimed a phone call with OpenAI's General Counsel, though none of this refutes the core theft accusations.

📊 Bending Spoons buys Airtable for $1.3B LINK

Bending Spoons has agreed to buy the no-code workflow platform Airtable in an all-cash deal worth $1.285 billion in enterprise value, which puts Airtable's equity value at about $2.25 billion once its cash is counted.

It's the Milan company's first purchase since its Nasdaq listing on July 1, 2026, and Bending Spoons plans to hold Airtable long-term, adding AI, rather than reselling it as private equity firms often do.

Airtable, founded in 2013, counts over 500,000 organizations as customers, including 80% of the Fortune 100, and reached about $480 million in yearly recurring revenue, up more than 20% from a year earlier.

🍎 Apple plans iPhone-Windows copy-paste LINK

Apple has agreed to build a feature that lets you copy something on your iPhone and paste it on a Windows 11 PC, syncing the two clipboards after a request from Microsoft.

To make cross-device copy and paste work, Apple would give Microsoft broader access to the iPhone clipboard, which today only lets apps read it while running in the foreground.

Apple called the work a "significant engineering effort" and doesn't expect it before late 2027, and it may limit the feature to European Union users to comply with the Digital Markets Act.

🇺🇸 US drafts ban on Chinese data gear LINK

The Trump administration is drafting a ban on Chinese-made hardware used in US data centers, aiming to keep Chinese technology out of the infrastructure behind the country's AI buildout, according to Reuters.

The gear likely covered includes networking switches, servers, storage, and management chips, all treated as possible supply-chain weak points or paths for remote access back to Chinese vendors.

The move follows a recent ban on Chinese humanoid robots and power inverters, and it faces hurdles like resellers and relabeled parts, plus higher costs since some equipment has few affordable non-Chinese options.

🏛️ White House says its AI framework is done LINK

The White House says it has finished a voluntary framework for checking the cybersecurity strengths of the most advanced AI models, and will meet with AI companies Tuesday to talk it through, a White House official told CNBC.

Under the program, ordered by Trump on June 2, developers can give the government access to qualifying "covered frontier models" for up to 30 days before releasing them to other trusted partners, letting officials test for cyberattack risks.

Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google are expected to attend, while the benchmark and the threshold deciding which models get reviewed stay classified, and the order bars the effort from becoming a mandatory federal licensing or preclearance rule.

Other news you might like

• Microsoft is bringing Xbox 360 games to PCLINK

• Samsung is removing smart TV apps that secretly turn users' internet connections into residential proxiesLINK

• Apple challenges UK government’s latest demand for iCloud backdoor: reportLINK

• Three major PC makers now using Chinese memory to fight 'unprecedented memory shortage,' report claimsLINK

• Congress’s favorite AI tool? ChatGPTLINK

• SpaceX is crowding rivals off the rockets they depend onLINK

• Influencers draw backlash for attending OpenAI’s first luxury tripLINK

• Hugging Face CEO says China is winning the AI race and dominating on open modelsLINK

• BMW is putting Spider-Man ads on your dashboard, after promising it never wouldLINK

• TikTok has never let a teen-addiction case reach a jury. It just settled three more.LINK

• An AI-supervised remote exam went so badly that 58,000 students must retake itLINK

• Telegram appears to have been pulled from the App Store worldwide [U]LINK

🧰 Trending tools

Driven: combines a Pomodoro timer with habit tracking and to-do lists, using streaks and calendar views to keep you motivated daily.LINK

ScrollToll: locks your social feeds after excessive scrolling and requires a quick fitness break before granting access, turning passive screen time into movement.LINK

Wondering: runs AI-moderated user interviews and usability tests at scale, letting product teams collect qualitative feedback without manual recruiting or live sessions.LINK

Yokoso: automates Italian short-term rental paperwork-self-check-in, Alloggiati Web submissions, electronic invoicing, and tourist tax calculations-all in one web app.LINK

AirProof AI: simulates indoor airflow to test air purifier placements, comparing coverage, efficiency, and recirculation risk to optimize positioning automatically.LINK

Snipplet: a tool for saving and sharing your favorite places with photos and tips, turning past trips into shareable visual guides instead of scattered screenshots.LINK

📚 Trending papers & reports

AI writing detectors systematically flag non-native English writers as machine-generated more often, while separate tracking finds AI-assisted text now runs through peer reviews, scientific papers, consumer complaints, corporate memos, job listings, and international press releases alike.LINK

Personalized phone-automation agents now learn not just the steps you take but your personal habits from watching 40 real users, letting them complete tasks the way you'd actually want, not just technically correctly.LINK

Hateful meme detection now spots hidden background assumptions and false claims behind a meme's joke, beating prior detection methods and also working well for catching fake news.LINK

Medical AI reasoning can adjust how much it "thinks" per question, cutting the computing needed to answer by 4.7x to 6.4x while keeping accuracy nearly the same.LINK

Time series reasoning now pairs specialized forecasting models with language models, so systems can explain and answer questions about numerical trends, not just predict them, beating comparable open-source alternatives.LINK

See you tomorrow for a new dose of ☕️ Techpresso!