Apple to OpenAI: Stop Poaching Our Hardware, or We'll See You in Court 🍎⚖️

Apple has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and two former employees, alleging the ChatGPT maker built its consumer hardware division using stolen trade secrets. The complaint, filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, names former Apple senior system electrical engineer Chang Liu, former iPhone and Apple Watch design executive Tang Yew Tan, OpenAI Foundation, OpenAI Group PBC, and io Products.

Apple alleges that Liu, who left the company in January after eight years, failed to return a company laptop and later accessed Apple's internal systems through an authentication bug. "While employed by OpenAI, Mr. Liu also exploited a rare, previously unknown authentication bug to access Apple's shared network folders," Apple's attorneys said in the complaint. "Upon discovering that he had this unauthorized access to Apple's systems, Mr. Liu did not report it, return his stolen Apple-issued work laptop, or delete the program that allowed the access."

According to the filing, Liu downloaded dozens of confidential hardware files, including engineering presentations, technical specifications, and proprietary project data related to unreleased products. Apple also alleges that Tan, who spent 24 years at the company before becoming OpenAI's chief hardware officer, used confidential information from his time at Apple to benefit OpenAI. The complaint claims Tan referenced Apple's internal project names during OpenAI interviews and asked about unreleased products, while candidates were reportedly instructed to bring "actual parts" for "show and tell." Apple further claims OpenAI's recruiting process requested "CAD/design artifacts," prototypes, supplier information, and details about employees' work on Apple hardware.

Apple says it contacted OpenAI in February with concerns about confidential information entering the company but received no response. Apple and OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Decrypt. The lawsuit follows OpenAI's $6.4 billion acquisition of io Products, the hardware startup founded by former Apple designer Jony Ive, who is not named in the complaint. According to the filing, OpenAI's hardware division has hired more than 400 former Apple employees.

The suit comes weeks after a separate trade secret dispute between OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI, which sued OpenAI in September alleging the ChatGPT maker recruited former employees to obtain confidential source code, training methods, and data center strategies. OpenAI denied the allegations, and a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in June, finding xAI failed to show OpenAI encouraged a former employee to disclose confidential information. The Apple case marks a sharp reversal from the companies' 2024 partnership, when Apple tapped OpenAI to bring ChatGPT to Siri as part of Apple Intelligence, before later turning to Google's Gemini to power its next-generation AI models after delays stalled the rollout.