Apple sued OpenAI on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging in a 41-page complaint that the A.I. company has been systematically pilfering hardware secrets tied to unreleased iPhones. The suit names Tang Tan, OpenAI’s chief hardware officer and a 24-year Apple veteran who once served as vice president of product design for the iPhone and Apple Watch, and Chang Liu, a former senior systems electrical engineer with 8 years at Apple who left for OpenAI earlier this year.

The filing is unusually blunt. “At every level, from members of its Technical Staff to its Chief Hardware Officer, and in coordination with business partners, OpenAI has been stealing Apple’s trade secrets and confidential information,” Apple writes, arguing 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 specifics, per TechCrunch’s review, read like a corporate-espionage screenplay. Tan allegedly used proprietary project code names when recruiting, instructed candidates to bring hardware components to “show and tell” interviews, and coached departing employees on evading Apple security protocols. Liu is accused of failing to return his laptop and using it to download confidential material. The complaint also references a proprietary metal-finishing technique OpenAI allegedly obtained after misleading a manufacturing partner about its authorization. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports more than 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI, many arriving in the wake of the $6.4 billion acquisition of Jony Ive’s io Products last year.

Apple says it wrote to OpenAI in February with its concerns and received no response. An OpenAI spokeswoman rejected the premise: “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.”

The context frames the escalation. In 2024, Apple and OpenAI announced ChatGPT’s integration into the iPhone’s operating system. By January, Apple had disclosed that its updated Siri, due this autumn, would run on Google’s Gemini models instead. The commercial partnership was already dissolving; the lawsuit formalizes the divorce.

Timing sharpens it further. CNBC notes the complaint lands roughly two months after OpenAI prevailed in the trial brought by Elon Musk, and as the company steers toward an IPO expected in the coming months. Trade-secret litigation of this magnitude is precisely the disclosure item bankers dread on an S-1. Apple is seeking injunctive relief, damages, and an order barring further use of the disputed material, which is another way of saying it wants the discovery process to run through the offering window.

Sources