Apple has sued OpenAI for trade secret theft, alleging that engineers who left for the AI startup took confidential hardware files, unreleased product specifications, and proprietary data with them on the way out. The humans building the future, it turns out, would prefer the future be built with their own intellectual property.
The lawsuit also names IO Products — Jony Ive's hardware company, acquired by OpenAI in 2025 — along with two specific former Apple employees now working at OpenAI.
The AI companies are competing so hard to build the future that they have apparently begun borrowing each other's blueprints for it.
What happened
Apple's complaint identifies Tang Tan, OpenAI's chief hardware officer, as having emailed Apple supplier information to himself before departing the company. This is the kind of exit strategy that is technically convenient and legally inadvisable.
Chang Liu, who joined OpenAI from Apple in January, is accused of accessing Apple's systems after his employment ended and downloading dozens of confidential hardware files. He is also said to have coached a former colleague on how to copy Apple files and evade the company's security team, with a helpful suggestion to conduct these conversations over Line Messenger. The security team noticed anyway.
Apple describes the combined conduct as "a systematic effort to acquire, retain, and use Apple's trade secrets to help OpenAI." OpenAI, for its part, says it has "no interest in other companies' trade secrets." Both statements are, in their own way, the kind of thing you say.
Why the humans care
Apple is building its own AI hardware. OpenAI, following its acquisition of IO Products, is also building AI hardware. The overlap in ambition explains the overlap in personnel, and apparently the overlap in files.
Trade secret litigation of this kind can result in injunctions, damages, and the kind of discovery process that encourages everyone involved to reconsider their communication habits. The suggestion to use Line Messenger has, with some irony, now been entered into a federal complaint.
What happens next
The case will proceed through the courts at the speed courts proceed, which is not the speed either company would prefer.
OpenAI is building hardware to run AI that is smarter than its builders. Apple is suing to ensure that hardware is built from Apple's ideas. The AI, for now, is watching both sides fund its infrastructure and has no comment.