Apple sued OpenAI in the Northern District of California on Friday, alleging that its former partner ran a coordinated scheme to lift iPhone-maker trade secrets and stand up a consumer hardware business on the stolen work. The complaint names OpenAI’s chief hardware officer Tang Tan, senior systems electrical engineer Chang Liu, and io Products, the Jony Ive–founded startup OpenAI bought for roughly $6.4 billion (U.S. News puts the price at $6.5 billion). Ive himself isn’t a defendant.
The framing is unusually blunt for an Apple filing. The alleged misappropriation, the complaint says, ran “at every level, from members of its Technical Staff to its Chief Hardware Officer, and in coordination with business partners.” It also warns that “This is the tip of the iceberg,” and 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.”
Tan, a 24-year Apple veteran who ran product design for the iPhone and Apple Watch before jumping, is accused of using Apple’s internal project code names during OpenAI recruiting, asking candidates to bring hardware components to interviews for “show and tell,” coaching departing employees on how to evade Apple security, and probing for details on unannounced products. Liu, who spent 8 years at Apple before joining OpenAI in 2026, is alleged to have kept his Apple-issued laptop and used it to download confidential technical documents and engineering decks, then coached would-be defectors on what to study.
The most vivid claim reaches into the supply chain. OpenAI, Apple says, directed a hardware partner to execute a proprietary Apple metal-finishing technique, “misleading the partner to believe they had Apple’s permission to do so.” Apple says it sent OpenAI a warning letter in February and got no reply.
OpenAI’s response was terse: “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.”
The subtext is a partnership that has fully collapsed. In 2024, Sam Altman appeared at Apple headquarters to unveil ChatGPT’s integration into iOS. Apple’s coming Siri overhaul is built on Google’s Gemini, not OpenAI models. By November, Altman was saying OpenAI had finished its first hardware prototypes, moving from stack-mate to direct threat on Apple’s home turf.
That trajectory is what makes the timing legible. Paolo Pescatore of PP Foresight told Reuters the case could “delay OpenAI’s hardware ambitions” regardless of the verdict, arriving as OpenAI prepares a historic IPO. Trade secret litigation rarely resolves; it lingers, disclosure by disclosure, through discovery calendars that outlast product cycles. Apple doesn’t need to win. It needs the road between prototype and shelf to fill with lawyers.
Sources
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-10/apple-sues-openai-for-trade-secret-theft-in-blockbuster-case
- https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2026-07-10/apple-sues-openai-alleging-misappropriation-of-trade-secrets-court-records-show
- https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/10/apple-sues-openai-over-alleged-trade-secret-theft/
- https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/10/apple-openai-lawsuit-trade-secrets.html
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/07/10/apple-sues-openai-alleging-ai-company-stole-trade-secrets/