Legal Battle: Apple Takes on OpenAI in AI Hardware Trade Secret Dispute

Apple has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that the ChatGPT creator has been stealing trade secrets about its products, not only trying to poach employees from Apple, but asking them to share details about secret projects and even coaching them on how to do so.

News of the lawsuit was first broken by Chance Miller at 9to5Mac, which beat bigger outlets like The New York Times to the punch. Miller shared a statement from an Apple spokesperson explaining the motivation behind the lawsuit, which seems aimed squarely at OpenAI’s recent efforts to develop AI hardware technologies.

The lawsuit specifically names two former Apple employees, Chang Liu and Tang Tan, the latter of whom joined forces with Jony Ive to help co-found OpenAI’s hardware venture, and now serves as its chief hardware officer. However, it notably makes no mention of other previous Apple heavyweights such as Ive himself or Evans Hankey, who served as Apple’s vice president of industrial design after Ive’s departure, and eventually also left to join up with her former boss in the AI venture that ultimately entered OpenAI’s orbit.

In fact, as John Gruber points out at Daring Fireball, Apple goes far out of its way to avoid any mention of them, describing the project in question as “a venture co-founded by Mr. Tan and other former Apple leaders.” Hearing Jony Ive referred to so parenthetically is odd, but it’s clear that it’s Tan that Apple has in its primary crosshairs.

The Anatomy of an Inside Job

The complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, specifically calls out both Tan and Liu as the perpetrators of what appears to be a deliberate operation to coax as many trade secrets out of their former associates as they possibly can.

This includes not only asking potential hires to share details about secret projects they’d worked on at Apple, but going so far as to ask them to bring device components and prototypes to interviews and even coaching them on how to get information out of Apple without triggering security processes.

Apple’s lawsuit also explicitly accuses Liu of a deliberate plan to steal trade secrets during his move to OpenAI in January 2026. Liu had worked as a senior system electrical engineer at Apple for eight years, but after leaving he allegedly failed to respond to a request to return his devices and comply with the standard exit procedures.

The court filing notes that Apple is still investigating the matter, as “Mr. Liu has taken steps to hide the full extent of his theft,” but has already discovered several “troubling facts,” including a failure to return an Apple-issued work laptop, access to a former colleague’s Apple-issued computer, and hacking into Apple’s secure network through “a rare, previously unknown authentication bug.”

Apple also claims that Liu “celebrated his improper access” through messages to a colleague, and “surreptitiously accessed and downloaded dozens of Apple’s confidential hardware-related files, including voluminous, detailed information about unreleased products, engineering presentations, technical specifications, and proprietary project data” after he had already begun working for OpenAI.

‘Show and Tell’ Interviews and ‘Need to Know’ Evasions

Tang Yew Tan, who spent twenty-four years at Apple, departing as vice president of product design for iPhone and Apple Watch, had an extremely high level of access to Apple’s “most sensitive projects, trusted partner relationships, proprietary manufacturing techniques, and unreleased products.” Apple claims that its investigation shows that Tan has now been “methodically using Apple’s confidential information to benefit OpenAI.”

This includes using confidential internal project codenames to pepper new hires with questions about unannounced Apple products, and asking them to bring products and parts for “show and tell” sessions during their job interviews.

The lawsuit goes on to claim that Tan has warned new hires not to tell Apple they have taken jobs at OpenAI so they can retain access to confidential information that can be funneled to the AI company’s hardware engineering teams.

A Rotten Foundation: Taking OpenAI to Task

While Apple’s lawsuit only names Tan and Liu, it aims to hold OpenAI accountable for what it calls “a coordinated pattern of misconduct at an institutional level,” claiming “The Corporate Defendants […] have been acting in concert and as an enterprise” to steal and exploit Apple’s confidential information to their own ends.

Apple adds that it considered this “the tip of the iceberg,” as it has no way of knowing what’s actually going on behind closed doors.