Former Apple CEO John Sculley identified OpenAI as the largest competitive threat facing Apple in years, marking a potential shift after decades of dominance by the iPhone maker in the technology industry.

“This is the biggest thing I think that’s happened since Tim Cook took over from Steve Jobs 15 years ago,” he told “The Claman Countdown” Monday.

Sculley’s comments come one week after it was announced that Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple’s CEO and will become its executive chairman, and as both Apple and OpenAI are reportedly exploring the development of similar next-generation AI products.

Apple is reportedly set to launch a wearable AI pin, Sculley said, while former Apple designer Jony Ive, credited for helping transform the company’s product vision, is partnering up with OpenAI to create its own AI-powered hardware.

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Open AI CEO Sam Altman speaks during a talk session with SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son at an event titled “Transforming Business through AI” in Tokyo, Japan, on Feb. 3. (Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images / Getty Images)

“It’s one that may have a camera in it. It won’t have a screen. And it’s going to be able to have what’s called ambient awareness, meaning it’s always on, it’s listening, and you get it through an ear pod,” he explained. “And that would be an entirely new user experience for people in the Apple ecosystem.”

Sculley said each company’s interpretation of the device will be different, but warned the competition poses a threat to Apple’s longstanding tech dominance.

He signaled that consumer loyalty may vary, as buyers will gravitate toward their preferred product, rather than defaulting to Apple’s ecosystem.

“I expect that they’re going to be taking very different ways of interpreting it in terms of a product,” the former Apple CEO said.

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“Some are going to become loyal to one version and some are gonna become loyal to another.”

The emergence of OpenAI as a dominant force in the tech world is part of what Sculley described as a “weather system” that is constantly shifting the industry.

Tim Cook to become Apple Executive chairman and John Ternus to become Apple CEO on September 1, 2026. (Reuters / Reuters)

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Sculley affirmed that amid the AI storm, Apple’s leadership remains strong, even amid concerns surrounding Cook’s transition.

“Tim Cook did a spectacular job as CEO,” Sculley told FOX Business. “And the incoming CEO, John Ternus, looks incredibly qualified to be the next leader. So, from that standpoint, Apple’s in a very good position.”

Sculley went on to share advice for Apple as it rings in its 50th year in operation and as the race for AI dominance only intensifies.

“Stay true to the values Apple has been so successful at: beautiful products, no compromises,” he said.

A group of budget airlines is reportedly seeking financial assistance from the federal government that could convert to an equity stake in the air carriers.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that the group of budget airlines, including Frontier and Avelo, is seeking $2.5 billion in federal assistance through stock warrants that could convert into equity stakes in the airlines, according to people familiar with the matter.

Some of the Journal’s sources told the outlet that the group’s $2.5 billion figure was derived from an estimate of how much they expect to spend on jet fuel this year compared with earlier forecasts, with the estimate assuming jet fuel prices will remain above an average of $4 a gallon for the rest of the year.

A Frontier Airlines plane approaches Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. (Ken Cedeno/Reuters)

Conversations about a possible relief package for budget airlines are reportedly expected to continue in the coming days, according to the Journal’s report. The news follows a reported meeting between the leaders of several budget carriers with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Federal Aviation Administration chief Bryan Bedford last week.

“As the smallest and newest airline in the country, Avelo competes against significantly larger airlines who have unprecedented market dominance,” Avelo Airlines said in a statement to FOX Business. “Our focus on unserved and underserved airports gives millions of U.S. consumers low fare nonstop air service options they otherwise would not have. We have no specific comment on the report, but we emphatically agree that a healthy airline industry with strong competition is important to the U.S. economy, especially during this period of high fuel prices.”

FOX Business reached out to Frontier Airlines for comment.

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Rising jet fuel prices amid the war in Iran have strained the outlooks for air carriers, who face higher costs than anticipated. 

Some air carriers, including larger rivals like United and American, have responded by raising fares and checked baggage fees on consumers.

United Airlines recently raised passenger fares, citing the rising cost of jet fuel. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

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Last week, leading budget carriers requested that Congress pass a bill to suspend the 7.5% federal excise tax on airline tickets and the $5.30 per segment tax, which the Association of Value Airlines estimated would offset about one-third of the increased fuel costs. 

The group represents Spirit Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Allegiant Air, Sun Country and Avelo.

The budget airlines’ pursuit of federal aid comes as the Trump administration is weighing a separate proposal to provide relief for Spirit Airlines in the form of a $500 million loan that would give the federal government the ability to convert warrants into equity stakes in the airlines.

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The deal would see the federal government receive warrants equal to about 90% of Spirit’s equity in exchange for the funding.

The Trump administration is weighing a separate proposal to provide relief for Spirit Airlines. (AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)

Rising jet fuel costs have complicated Spirit’s plan to exit bankruptcy this summer, after the budget carrier entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings for the second time last year.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Treasury Department received warrants in major airlines after a roughly $54 billion support package to prevent mass layoffs during the pandemic. 

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The federal government ultimately opted against exercising the warrants it acquired and instead sold them in actions that yielded over $550 million.

Reuters contributed to this report.

More than 300 pubs, bars and restaurants have served their last pint and plated their last cover since the start of the year, as Britain’s licensed trade groans under the combined weight of higher wage bills, stubborn energy costs and customers who are quietly drinking and dining at home.

Fresh analysis from CGA by NIQ, the market research group, shows the number of licensed premises across the UK slipped to 98,609 by the end of March, a net loss of 305 venues since December, or rather more than three closures every single day. Coming on top of the 382 sites lost between September and December, the figures mean the country has shed 0.7 per cent of its licensed estate in just six months.

It is a slow-motion contraction that is now accelerating. Casual dining has been hit hardest, with the number of restaurants in that bracket falling by 0.9 per cent in the first quarter alone. Bars, nightclubs, traditional pubs and social clubs have also gone to the wall as households defer the small discretionary treats, a Friday curry, a midweek pint, a birthday dinner, that have long propped up neighbourhood operators.

Behind the headline numbers sits a familiar but increasingly toxic mix of cost pressures. April’s rise in employers’ national insurance contributions, the upward ratchet on business rates and persistently elevated food prices have eaten into already wafer-thin margins. Energy bills, which many operators had hoped would ease this year, have instead been pushed higher by the war in the Gulf, with wholesale gas and fuel prices feeding through to suppliers and threatening another round of menu price rises that publicans are reluctant to pass on to bruised customers.

Karl Chessell, director of hospitality operators and food at NIQ, said confidence among both businesses and consumers remained stubbornly low and warned that “geopolitical crises are likely to cause more damage in the months ahead”. While many operators had “shown remarkable resilience”, he said, “thousands are now nearing breaking point”.

“Soaring costs have taken a heavy toll on hospitality in the first quarter,” Chessell added. “Without targeted support, more closures can be expected over the rest of 2026.”

The trade is now lobbying ministers in earnest for a sector-specific package, a permanent reduction in business rates for hospitality, a lower rate of VAT on food and drink in line with much of continental Europe, and a softening of the national insurance changes for smaller employers. Operators argue that the alternative is the slow hollowing-out of the British high street, with independents and chains alike disappearing from market towns and city centres at a rate not seen since the depths of the pandemic.

For now, the maths is brutally simple. Wages, energy and tax are all rising; footfall and spend per head are not. Until that equation shifts, through policy, peace or a meaningful rebound in consumer confidence, the country’s pubs, bars and restaurants will keep going dark, three a day, one local at a time.

Jamie Young

Jamie is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, bringing over a decade of experience in UK SME business reporting.
Jamie holds a degree in Business Administration and regularly participates in industry conferences and workshops.

When not reporting on the latest business developments, Jamie is passionate about mentoring up-and-coming journalists and entrepreneurs to inspire the next generation of business leaders.

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Sir Keir Starmer is facing fresh calls to spearhead a new cabinet committee charged with shielding British businesses from the mounting cost of global economic shocks, after one of the country’s most influential lobby groups warned that the UK remains dangerously exposed to disruption.

In a report published on Sunday night, the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) said a decade marked by Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had laid bare the absence of meaningful contingency planning to insulate the UK economy when global supply chains seize up.

The intervention lands at a pointed moment. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz for two months in the wake of the Middle East war is expected to push British inflation higher in the coming quarter and is already squeezing supplies of components used across the food and heavy industry sectors.

Shevaun Haviland, director-general of the BCC, said small and mid-sized firms had been “permanently bruised” by the procession of global shocks and could no longer be left to absorb the consequences alone.

“The UK’s inadequate economic security has become a drag on growth, competitiveness and national strength; yet it is still not given the focus and urgency it demands. The wars in Ukraine and Iran have demonstrated how supply chains can be disrupted overnight. We now live in a world where trade interests may be weaponised and where failing to secure key raw materials means failing to grow.”

At the heart of the BCC’s recommendations is the creation of an economic security cabinet committee, chaired by the prime minister of the day, that would coordinate Whitehall’s response to trade disputes, retaliatory tariffs and attempts to lock British exporters out of foreign markets.

The proposal arrives in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s decision in February to strike down President Donald Trump’s so-called “liberation day” tariffs,  a ruling that has done little to soften the chilling effect his protectionist agenda has had on free-trading economies, many of which have been forced to design emergency retaliatory measures of their own.

The lobby group is also urging ministers to follow Brussels’s lead and forge a UK version of the EU’s “anti-coercion instrument”, introduced in 2023 and dubbed by some officials a “trade bazooka”. The mechanism would empower the government to impose import charges, and other punitive trade restrictions, on companies based in jurisdictions judged to be in breach of international trade commitments.

The numbers underline the case. The BCC estimates that more than 75 per cent of British manufactured goods sold overseas begin life with imported components, while imports and exports together account for around 60 per cent of UK gross domestic product. Few advanced economies, the report argues, are quite so reliant on the smooth running of someone else’s logistics.

Diversifying that supply chain, so that Britain is less dependent on a narrow band of suppliers for the raw materials underpinning the industries of the future, must become a strategic priority, the BCC says. Demand for lithium, copper and aluminium, the building blocks of electric vehicles, batteries and renewable infrastructure, is forecast to surge over the next decade as consumers and businesses move to greener products.

China’s near monopoly over the refining and processing of many of those critical minerals is, in the BCC’s view, the clearest illustration of why ministers should accelerate domestic production where possible and steer supply chains towards “friendlier” trading partners.

For Britain’s small and medium-sized exporters — many still nursing the scars of Brexit-related red tape and pandemic-era cost spikes, the message from Westminster’s business community is becoming impossible to ignore: in an era of weaponised trade, economic security is no longer the preserve of the Foreign Office. It is, increasingly, a board-level concern.

Jamie Young

Jamie is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, bringing over a decade of experience in UK SME business reporting.
Jamie holds a degree in Business Administration and regularly participates in industry conferences and workshops.

When not reporting on the latest business developments, Jamie is passionate about mentoring up-and-coming journalists and entrepreneurs to inspire the next generation of business leaders.

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