NBC released an investigative report revealing the core details of the communication breakdown between Apple and OpenAI before the lawsuit over their business dispute — two key emails, a 13-minute interval, and a name mix-up ultimately led to both parties going to court. Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI last week in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing several of OpenAI's employees of stealing confidential and proprietary information about unreleased products, components, and supplier relationships.

The first email was followed by a "miscommunication" 13 minutes later

The incident began on February 23, 2026. On that day, Apple's external lawyer Gabriel Gross sent the first email to Che Chang, General Counsel of OpenAI, at 5:53 PM, with the subject line "OpenAI former Apple employee retaining non-public, confidential, and proprietary information," along with one PDF letter and three attachments. However, just 13 minutes later, without Chang having replied, Gross sent a second email in the same email thread, stating "Thank you for the call just now" and saying he would contact Apple again before reaching out, while also attaching the three documents.

However, in fact, Gross and Chang had not spoken on the phone during those 13 minutes. The second email from Gross was originally intended for a former Apple employee named Wang — who later joined OpenAI, not Chang. This reply meant for Wang was mistakenly sent to Chang, causing a critical misunderstanding in communication.

OpenAI believes the misunderstanding has been clarified, but Apple claims it "never responded"