WSJ What’s News - Apple Sues OpenAI, Alleging the AI Company Stole Trade Secrets

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

P.M. Edition for July 10. Apple’s lawsuit also names one of OpenAI’s top executives, a former Apple employee. Plus, Israeli intelligence about a possible plot to kill President Trump made U.S. officials concerned about a lack of defensive capabilities on the new Air Force One. The success of films like “Backrooms” and “Obsession” means Hollywood is combing sites like YouTube and Reddit for the next big horror hit. WSJ entertainment reporter Ben Fritz discusses who’s making money from that and what risks there are for film studios. And South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix pops in its U.S. market debut. Alex Ossola hosts. A 'Mansion Tax' Complicated the Housing Crisis. Could a Federal Bill Fix It?  Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It kind of escape your control. It's Friday, July 10th. I'm Alex O'Sulloch for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines. and business stories that move the world today. We start today's show with a lawsuit between two tech giants. Apple has sued OpenAI and one of its top executives, alleging the AI company stole trade secrets.

The civil suit accuses OpenAI of taking Apple's confidential information as part of its effort to develop competing devices. Two OpenAI staffers named in the suit, OpenAI's chief hardware officer and a member of its technical staff are former Apple employees. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Wall Street Journal's parent company News Corp has a content deal with OpenAI. More Americans are testing positive for marijuana in workplace drug tests. Quest Diagnostics ran around 8 million of those drug tests last year, and about 4.4% of them came back positive.

That's up from 3.9% in 2021. More states and cities in the U.S. have legalized marijuana, which means a positive test isn't as big a deal to employers. It can still matter for some jobs, like trucking or construction, but these days more employers say marijuana is like alcohol. It's fine if you're doing it off the clock. In fact, an employment lawyer says some jobs have stopped screening applicants for marijuana altogether because it would be harder for them to find qualified candidates. In China, a fire at a shoe factory in the southeastern part of the country. country killed at least 28 people yesterday. It's the latest in a string of fatal industrial accidents. An explosion in a coal mine in May killed more than 80 people, while a blast at a fireworks factory

in central China claimed 37 lives. Experts say China's factory conditions have improved over the years, but it's still a huge problem, with more than 18,000 deaths from workplace accidents last year. Separately, Chinese state media said today that the country had launched and, crucially, partially recovered a space rocket. It was the first time China had. has successfully displayed its rocket recovery technology. WSJ China economics reporter Katrina Northrop says it's an important milestone as Beijing seeks to transform itself into a space power and to compete with the U.S. China has been investing a huge amount into space and encouraging their private space

companies to do more satellite launches. And this shows that China is rapidly catching up to the U.S. recovering a rocket is important because it makes satellite launches a lot cheaper. If you can recover part of the material, then you can reuse it in the next launch. SpaceX has been doing this for more than a decade, and that's really enabled them to do many, many launches at a cheaper cost. China hasn't been able to do that until today, and so there is still a real gap between the two countries. We have three updates from the aviation industry. Delta says revenue in the second quarter rose 19 percent, and CEO Ed Bastian said travel demand is strong, even with airfares

rising. In an interview on CNBC today, he added that ticket prices haven't risen as much as overall inflation, and that airfare is a, quote, tremendous bargain. If you look at post-COVID, airfares for the industry are 10 to 15 percent lower than what average CPI has been. So if people are having concerns with respect to airfares, they have much higher concerns with respect to other products, which maybe is a reason why the demand continues to stay strong for us. Overall profit fell by about a quarter, however, to $1.6 billion. The rising cost of fuel and other items outpaced the revenue jump. The company sticking to its previous guidance for the full year.

There may be a bidding war in store for Budget Airline EasyJet, one of Europe's biggest carriers. EasyJet said today that it's agreed to a potential $7.6 billion takeover by U.S. asset manager Apollo. But just on Monday, EasyJet said that it agreed in principle to a more than $7 billion takeover by another U.S. investor firm Castle Lake. Apollo has until August 7th to make a formal offer or walk away. Castle Lake says it's considering its options.

EasyJet stock today rose 14% in London. Another European airline Ryanair made an emergency landing shortly after takeoff in Greece today. A window from the plane dislodged during the flight and a passenger's head was pulled through the opening. Greek media reports that the passenger was a 61-year-old Serbian man. His wife held onto his legs, and she and other passengers were able to pull him back inside the cabin. A U.S. regulator, the National Transportation Safety Board,

says the plane turned back to the airport after a right engine issue and the cabin decompressing. A person briefed on preliminary details says that an engine failure appeared to cause debris to hit the side of the plane. That rapidly depressurized the cabin and the window was jolted out. Ryanair says emergency responders met the passenger who survived. Boeing, the plane maker, says it's been in contact with Ryanair. Coming up, there's an early sign that sluggish home sales could heat up this summer. That's after the break. Visit BetMDM Casino and check out the newest exclusive.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. The Wall Street Journal has learned that President Trump flew an older Air Force One plane home from the Native Summit in Turkey this week, because his new luxury Air Force One lacked defensive capabilities. U.S. officials said the Israeli intelligence about a possible Iranian plot. to kill Trump factored into that decision, even though the threat wasn't deemed entirely credible. The Secret Service, the White House's military office, and some national security staff, determined that Trump's new plane, a gift from the Qatari government, wasn't adequate to fly the president home. Trump has denied that a security concern prompted the decision to switch planes.

White House communications director Stephen Chung says the luxury plane has high-level security protocols. The precise defensive capabilities of Air Force One are classified. President Trump said today that he wouldn't sign a landmark housing bill because Congress hasn't taken action on his voter ID proposal. The bill is bipartisan and it aims to make housing more available and affordable. The White House didn't say whether Trump planned to veto the legislation. If he does nothing, it will become law automatically this weekend. The What's News team recently did a series on housing and one of our episodes focused on the housing bill. We'll leave a link to it in our show notes.

And despite the disappointing numbers for the spring home selling season, summer is all. already looking more promising. Mortgage technology and data company Optimal Blue says a lot more people locked in mortgage rates in June. This is a good sign for home sales in the next few months because buyers typically lock in their mortgage rates after they agree to make a purchase and before they close. While economists aren't expecting a housing boom, even a few months of higher sales would be good news for the sluggish market. South Korean chipmaker S.K. Heynix popped in its U.S. market debut today, the largest ever U.S. share sale by a foreign company. Shares closed 13% higher. U.S. indexes overall ended the day higher, with the S&P leading the gains, adding 0.4%.

For the week, the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ were both up more than 1%, while the Dow lost half a percent. Horror movies from young YouTube creators, movies like Backrooms and Obsession, have been surprised box office winners in recent months. Now, Hollywood is calming through YouTube and Reddit for the next big horror hit. Journal Entertainment reporter Ben Fritz is here to discuss. Ben, what kinds of digital properties are studios trying to snag? They're really interested in horror. Horror is clearly the genre that's working with young people and is big online. So they're trying to find properties that already have a big following on Reddit, on Roblox, on YouTube, on TikTok, etc. There was a recent deal for a creature called

Sirenhead, which is, I really recommend people just look it up online. It's very bizarre. interesting creature. It's like a giant monster. Like it's made of utility poles. For its head, it is two big sirens. I don't know how else to describe it. And it's sort of like a bigfoot for Gen Z. This Canadian illustrator named Trevor Henderson created in 2018. It sort of went nowhere for the first couple of years. And then it became a video game. And if people started playing the game on YouTube and it went viral, it's you can find it all over every digital platform you can think of to search for sirenhead and there is content. And how big of a deal, was it for a studio to acquire the rights to Sirenhead?

It's a huge deal. Hollywood for a long time has looked for stuff to adapt in books, in comic books, in toys, in games. We've never really looked to these new digital social platforms. And now it's becoming a huge new source of IP, thanks to the success of backrooms in particular. And for the digital creators like Trevor Henderson, I mean, it's life-changing. It's actually very hard to make money from a viral creation online. it kind of escaped your control. So Trevor told me, even though Sirenhead is so big, and you can find knockoff merchandise on Amazon and games on Roblox and whatever,

he's never made a penny from it until this movie deal. And how much was the movie deal? Just for the movie rights, he got more than $1 million. Part of the deal he held on to some of those rights for himself, he can still sell merchandise, make games, etc. You know, he's, as they say, gone from zero to hero very quickly. So deals like these present obvious benefits for creators, and I could see the appeal for Hollywood as well.

But does it present risks for these big movie studios? Yeah. I mean, Hollywood has a long history of finding a trend, like diving in full bore and then overdoing it. And we all remember when it seemed like there was a new superhero movie every week. And then when they overdo it and the quality starts to dip and people get sick of it. So there is absolutely a danger of that happening with digital horror. We're talking a lot about horror, which seems to be really resonating with younger audiences.

But is there a possibility that this interest from movie studios could expand into other genres? People are hopeful. There's obviously all sorts of content online. I think people are particularly talking about comedy. The big screen comedy also has been on life support for a while, and people would love to see more comedy succeeded the box office. And there's lots of good comedy on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram, for example. Nobody's cracked that nut yet. But there's definitely some hope that they'll be able to use this formula for a comedy as well.

That was WSJ Entertainment reporter Ben Fritz. And that's What's News for this week. Tomorrow you can look out for our weekly markets wrap-up, What's News and Markets. Then on Sunday, we'll be discussing the growing number of efforts across the U.S. to tax states' wealthiest residents. That's in What's News Sunday. And we'll be back with our regular show on Monday morning.

Today's show was produced by Danny Lewis and Anthony Bansi with supervising producer Tali Arbell. Michael Laval wrote our theme music. Aisha L. Musley is our deputy editor. Chris Zinsley is our deputy editor. and I'm Alex Osala. Have a great weekend and thanks for listening.