Apple has escalated its legal battle against OpenAI with a federal lawsuit alleging that the AI company built its hardware business on stolen trade secrets. Filed in court on Friday, the suit claims that OpenAI engaged in a coordinated pattern of misconduct, poaching former Apple engineers and extracting confidential information about unreleased products. The lawsuit also names io Products, the hardware startup led by former Apple design chief Jony Ive, as a participant in the alleged scheme.
Two former Apple employees at the center of the case
<
p>Apple specifically calls out Chang Liu, a former senior system electrical engineer, and Tang Yew Tan, who previously served as an Apple vice president and now holds the role of Chief Hardware Officer at OpenAI. According to the filing, Liu secretly accessed and downloaded dozens of confidential files spanning detailed technical specifications, engineering presentations, and proprietary project data tied to products that had not yet been announced. Tan, Apple claims, went a step further by directing job candidates still employed at Apple to bring actual hardware parts to their interviews with OpenAI. The company describes these sessions as show and tell exercises designed to extract additional trade secrets.
The lawsuit paints a picture of systematic information theft at an institutional level. Apple asserts that more than 400 of its former employees have joined OpenAI, and that the company deliberately structured its interview process to solicit confidential Apple information. The filing does not name Jony Ive individually but implicates io Products as complicit in what Apple calls a pattern of misconduct within OpenAI.
Apple tears into OpenAI’s hardware ambitions
Apple’s legal team did not mince words when describing the impact of the alleged theft. The filing states that OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets. The language echoes a sharply critical stance, arguing that OpenAI cannot build a legitimate hardware operation without stealing from its partners.
OpenAI has pushed back publicly. Drew Pusateri, the company’s director of strategic communications, posted a statement on social media asserting that OpenAI has no interest in other companies’ trade secrets and remains focused on building innovative technology. The company did not comment directly on the lawsuit when contacted by Apple prior to the filing, and Apple notes that OpenAI never responded to its concerns.
Importantly, the lawsuit does not affect Apple’s ongoing partnership with OpenAI for Apple Intelligence. A footnote in the filing clarifies that the agreement allowing Apple to integrate ChatGPT into its devices is not at issue here and has no connection to the trade secret allegations. This suggests Apple views the hardware theft case as separate from its broader AI collaboration with OpenAI. The legal action underscores the increasingly competitive and fraught relationship between the two tech giants as they both push deeper into hardware and artificial intelligence. For more on how AI is reshaping medical diagnostics, see our coverage of AI in healthcare.
