Apple’s odd partnership with OpenAI

Apple confirmed its highly-anticipated partnership with OpenAI at its worldwide developer conference this week, which will see ChatGPT integrated into all iOS 18 devices, but it seems that neither Apple nor OpenAI will benefit, financially, from the deal.

At least, not yet, anyway.

Why isn’t Apple paying OpenAI for the integration of ChatGPT?

Apple believes that the exposure OpenAI will get from integrating ChatGPT onto iOS 18 devices, which millions of people use, will create a mutually beneficial partnership that will be equal to, or more than, any monetary payment agreement.

Apple believes that more and more people are turning to AI, instead of using traditional search engines. This means their lucrative deal with Google, who pay billions to be the default search engine on Apple devices, could be over soon. So, their end goal is to secure revenue-sharing partnerships with AI companies and take a cut of what they make from monetizing their chatbots. They’re already in talks with Google to integrate Gemini onto iOS 18 devices and Anthropic to integrate Claude to give their users more options.

OpenAI will benefit financially from this deal if they can convince users to upgrade to a $20p/m subscription to use its ChatGPT Plus features, which include higher messaging limits. But Apple will undoubtedly take a cut from this if users purchase it via the Apple store.