Apple has sued OpenAI, accusing the company of stealing its trade secrets.
In a complaint filed in the Northern District of California Court on Friday, Apple says it “has revealed a pattern of theft of Apple’s trade secrets by OpenAI employees who previously worked at Apple.”
Along with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Apple named two people in the suit: OpenAI Chief Hardware Officer Tang Tan, who had worked at Apple for 24 years, and software engineer Chang Liu, who had worked at the company for 8 years before moving to OpenAI.
“At Apple, our teams are constantly developing the technology to create the world’s best products and services, and protecting their work and intellectual property is something we take very seriously,” an Apple spokesperson said in a statement. “Recently, significant evidence has emerged suggesting that people employed by OpenAI have improperly taken Apple’s proprietary and confidential information about our unreleased technologies, processes and products. We will always protect the hard work of our teams and innovations, and we are taking all appropriate steps to do so.”
Tech companies have been on the hunt for top tech talent in a fast-paced, multibillion-dollar hiring environment for the past few years as they race to develop advanced AI. But this is the first major case alleging that some of those unemployed workers illegally shared the secrets of their employers and their new bosses.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that it infringed Ziff Davis’ copyrights in training and using its AI programs.)
OpenAI was reportedly looking moved forward in its hardware ambitionswith products like AI earbuds and a smartphone. The move could provide OpenAI with a significant source of revenue beyond its subscription tiers, especially as it heats up investor money. It also has a partnership with Apple that includes integration ChatGPT to Siri answering the most difficult questions; it is unclear what that cooperation will be following the suit.
Former Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive’s company, io Products, merged with OpenAI in 2025. Ive is not mentioned by name in the filing, although Apple points to articles about OpenAI’s hardware goals and Ive’s involvement.
The AI race is intensifying, forcing companies to poach rivals’ top employees.
OpenAI is notorious for lawsuits. Publishers blamed the company to cancel copyrighted works to train large language models such as ChatGPT. They suspect again OpenAI withholds evidence about how it trains its AI models. The safety of its products has also been questioned. In one of the similar suits, a mother sued OpenAI earlier this year, claiming she was working with its chatbot. it led to the death of his daughter.
This increased testing comes as OpenAI weighs in on plans to become a publicly traded company. It’s unclear when that might happen, but Apple’s suit could complicate those efforts — especially if it undermines OpenAI’s hardware goals.
The ‘tip of the iceberg’
In its filing, Apple said it “entrusted Mr. Tan with its most critical projects, trusted partner relationships, proprietary manufacturing strategies, and unreleased products” during his tenure as vice president of product design for the iPhone and Apple Watch.
“Apple’s investigation revealed that Mr. Tan was using Apple’s confidential information to benefit OpenAI,” Apple said.
That included emailing himself information about Apple suppliers before Tan left the company, according to the filing. He allegedly asked OpenAI applicants currently working at Apple about unannounced products during negotiations, using project codes. Apple also alleged that Tan told “applicants who still work for Apple to bring ‘real parts’ from Apple to their interviews in order to have ‘show and tell’ sessions where he and his team at OpenAI could get some of Apple’s confidential information.”
In the complaint, Apple claims that Liu, who worked at Apple as a senior electrical engineer, failed to return a work laptop issued by Apple. He then found Apple shared network folders, and “accessed and downloaded a large number of confidential files related to Apple hardware, including extensive, detailed information on unreleased products, engineering presentations, technical specifications and proprietary project data.”
Apple called these situations the “tip of the iceberg” in the complaint, noting that it “is not reflected in what has been going on behind closed doors at OpenAI, where such misconduct is common and demonstrated by leadership.” It alleged that “OpenAI’s fledgling hardware business now rests on a very fragile foundation, which has been rotten to the core by its illegal reliance on unauthorized trade secrets.”
OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman have faced scrutiny for alleged copyright infringement, security concerns and, now, illegal access to intellectual property.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
OpenAI’s leadership style Sam Altman has been questioned before, which led to the company’s board in 2023 dismiss him summarilysaying he is misleading board members and investors. He was soon reinstated after a staff backlash.
In February, when Apple’s investigation had just begun, the company said it wrote to OpenAI, expressing its concerns about improper access to Apple’s confidential information. It asked OpenAI about the security measures it is taking to avoid this issue and asked the company to investigate and fix the situation. Apple says OpenAI never responded.
The goal of the suit is to stop the alleged theft of OpenAI’s secrets, Apple notes.
Apple has been expanding its AI partnership, tapping into Google’s Gemini models to help power this year’s updates to Apple Intelligence and Siri. Meanwhile, reports suggest that OpenAI may be considering legal action against Apple, alleging that ChatGPT should have been deeply integrated into Siri and other applications.