Editorial Team
6 min read
Apple alleges that OpenAI and former Apple employees sought confidential hardware information through recruiting, supplier contacts and a former engineer’s post-employment system access. The complaint has not been tested in court, and OpenAI says it is unaware of evidence that it has merit.
Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI tries to join a specific alleged security breach to a much broader theory about recruiting in the race to build AI hardware. The first proposition is about access: Apple says Chang Liu, a former Apple senior system electrical engineer, obtained confidential files after joining OpenAI. The second is about conduct and purpose: Apple says OpenAI’s hiring, interviews and supplier outreach were used to seek Apple trade secrets.
Those are allegations, not findings. OpenAI, the ChatGPT maker that has absorbed the io Products hardware team, says it takes them seriously but is not aware of evidence that the complaint has merit. The case will therefore turn on whether Apple can connect the alleged access, files and conversations to a legally protectable secret and to use or knowledge by the defendants — not on the fact that former Apple employees joined a potential hardware rival.
First page of Apple’s complaint alleging trade-secret misappropriation and breach of contract. Source: Apple complaint.
Apple filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and requested a jury trial, as a report on the case describes. Its complaint seeks injunctions, preservation of evidence, damages, potential unjust-enrichment recovery, a reasonable royalty and exemplary damages. Those are requested remedies, not awards.
Liu had been an Apple senior system electrical engineer for eight years before joining OpenAI in January 2026. Apple alleges in a report on the filing that he retained an Apple-issued laptop, then used a previously unknown authentication vulnerability to access network storage after his employment ended. It says a server-log review showed that a few other people could have reached the data, but alleges that only Liu did so.
Apple further alleges that Liu obtained dozens of confidential hardware-related files over several weeks, including information about unreleased products, engineering presentations, technical specifications and project data. It also alleges that he used an Apple-issued laptop belonging to Yu-Ting Peng while she remained an Apple employee; Peng later joined OpenAI. The report says Apple did not describe the alleged bug or the program Liu allegedly used.
This episode gives Apple a relatively definite chain to prove: what access existed, what files were obtained, whether they qualified as trade secrets, and what happened to them. But an alleged authentication flaw is not, by itself, proof that OpenAI received or used the information. The retained reporting contains no public response from Liu or Peng to those specific allegations and no judicial assessment of Apple’s evidence.
Apple also names Tang Yew Tan, OpenAI’s chief hardware officer. Tan spent 24 years at Apple, including as vice president of product design for the iPhone and Apple Watch, before moving to OpenAI. That record explains why he is central to Apple’s theory: the company alleges he directed Apple candidates to bring components, product samples and other work product to OpenAI interviews.
The account of the complaint says Apple also alleges that OpenAI used knowledge of Apple’s supplier relationships, manufacturing and design processes, and proprietary terminology to extract information from third parties. It further alleges that OpenAI advised departing employees on managing exits in ways that could avoid immediate removal from Apple systems. Each is Apple’s claim, and the reporting does not provide the defendants’ evidence on those points.
The distinction matters. Recruiting people with relevant experience is ordinary competition; bringing protectable information, directing its disclosure or using it is the alleged misconduct Apple must establish. The filing’s requested injunction against actual or threatened misappropriation and its demand for a jury trial show how much relief Apple is seeking, but do not resolve that line.
Jony Ive and Sam Altman in OpenAI’s official io announcement. Source: OpenAI.
Apple’s illustration of Siri asking permission before using ChatGPT. Source: Apple Newsroom.
OpenAI’s interest in hardware explains why Apple has framed the allegations as more than an isolated employee dispute. In 2025, OpenAI said the io Products team had merged with it. Jony Ive and his creative collective LoveFrom, which remain independent, took on design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI; OpenAI said Ive founded io with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tan. That company announcement establishes an organizational link between its device work and Tan, but it does not corroborate Apple’s accusations.
Reporting on OpenAI’s response describes an unannounced screen-free mobile smart speaker as a possible first OpenAI device, attributing those details to people familiar with the plans. OpenAI has not announced that product in the retained materials. The defensible competitive fact is narrower: OpenAI has incorporated an experienced hardware group, while Apple alleges that confidential information moved into that effort.
Apple and OpenAI are not simply strangers in separate markets. Apple said in its 2024 Apple Intelligence announcement that it would integrate ChatGPT access into iOS, iPadOS and macOS, with users asked before questions, documents or photos are sent to ChatGPT through Siri. That software integration is a different relationship from the unannounced hardware work at issue in Apple’s allegations; it is context for the tension, not evidence of misuse.
In its first public response to the case, OpenAI said in a statement reported after the filing that it was not aware of evidence that the complaint had merit. It said it believed in fair competition and employees’ freedom to work where they choose. In an earlier statement reported by the same account, the company said it had no interest in other companies’ trade secrets.
That response contests the premise without publicly answering the alleged access, interview or supplier episodes one by one. Apple’s accusations, meanwhile, do not establish the episodes. The current public record is therefore asymmetric: it lays out Apple’s chain of allegations and OpenAI’s general denial, not an evidentiary record tested by the court.
The next material development is likely to be evidence that narrows or breaks that chain. Apple will need to show more than employee movement and hardware ambition: which information was secret, how it was obtained, who saw it, and how a defendant used or knew of it. OpenAI and the individual defendants will have to contest those links, including the alleged authentication path and the handling of the files.
Until then, the case is best understood as a bid to treat alleged post-employment access and hiring practices as one coordinated trade-secret theory. Whether a court accepts that theory depends on the provenance and use of the information, not on the prominence of the people involved or the prospect of an OpenAI device.
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