Apple sued OpenAI in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Friday, alleging that the AI company ran a coordinated campaign to lift confidential hardware designs and manufacturing techniques from Cupertino, and naming as co-defendants OpenAI’s chief hardware officer Tang Tan, engineer Chang Liu, and Jony Ive’s io Products, which OpenAI bought for $6.4 billion. The complaint claims the misappropriation ran “at every level, from members of its Technical Staff to its Chief Hardware Officer.”
The named individuals are the point. Tan spent 24 years at Apple, most recently as VP of product design for the iPhone and Apple Watch, before decamping to run hardware at OpenAI. Liu was an 8-year Apple senior systems electrical engineer who left for OpenAI in January 2026. Apple’s complaint says Tan used confidential Apple project code names during OpenAI’s recruiting process and directed candidates to bring “actual parts” from Apple to interviews for “show and tell” sessions. Liu, per CNN’s read, failed to return his Apple laptop and used it to download “dozens” of confidential hardware files, and, per TechCrunch, coached other departing Apple staff on what to study before their OpenAI interviews. TechCrunch also reports that OpenAI coached recruits on how to slip past Apple’s exit-security procedures and used a proprietary Apple metal-finishing technique after allegedly misleading a manufacturing partner into believing it had Apple’s permission.
The scale isn’t incidental. More than 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI, per the complaint, with at least ten engineers hired directly and recently, per a CNN LinkedIn count. Apple sent OpenAI a letter in February 2026 raising concerns. It received no response.
OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri said: “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.”
Read structurally, this is the endgame of a partnership that never sat right. 24 months ago the two companies shook hands in Cupertino over ChatGPT-on-iPhone. Apple’s refreshed Siri, due this fall, will run on Google’s Gemini instead. Bloomberg reported in May that OpenAI was itself weighing a breach-of-contract action against Apple over the 2024 deal. Apple filed first.
There’s a longer arc here that resembles the Waymo-Uber litigation of 2017: a platform incumbent watching a well-capitalized challenger absorb its personnel and, allegedly, its device playbook, then reaching for federal court as the instrument of containment. OpenAI, fresh off winning its trial against Elon Musk two months ago, now enters discovery against a plaintiff with vastly deeper reserves and a specific list of files it says walked out the door.
Sources
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-10/apple-sues-openai-for-trade-secret-theft-in-blockbuster-case
- https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/10/apple-openai-lawsuit-trade-secrets.html
- https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/10/apple-sues-openai-over-alleged-trade-secret-theft/
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/07/10/apple-sues-openai-alleging-ai-company-stole-trade-secrets/
- https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/10/tech/apple-openai-devices-lawsuit