Apple Sues OpenAI Over Its Hardware Secrets

Apple has sued OpenAI in federal court in Northern California, accusing the company of running a coordinated campaign to lift its trade secrets and build rival hardware on the back of them. The complaint, filed on July 10 and reported by CNBC, Axios and CNN, also names io Products, the hardware startup OpenAI bought last year from former Apple designer Jony Ive.

The dispute is really about people. Apple says more than 400 of its former employees now work at OpenAI, and it frames those departures as something closer to a raid than ordinary turnover. Central to the filing is Tang Tan, an Apple veteran who helped shape the iPhone and Apple Watch and now runs hardware at OpenAI. Apple claims Tan and the company coached departing staff on how to slip past its exit-security checks on the way out the door.

One name draws particular attention. Apple alleges that Chang Liu, a former engineer, downloaded dozens of files from its network while building hardware for OpenAI, many of them stamped confidential, and then left with a company laptop. Apple's lawyers describe the alleged conduct as running "at every level" of the effort.

A partnership that curdled

The two companies were, until recently, on friendly terms. OpenAI's models sat behind parts of Apple's software, and the firms talked up their cooperation. That warmth cooled once OpenAI decided it wanted to make devices of its own. Its $6.4 billion purchase of Ive's io Products signalled ambitions to build the kind of pocket hardware that has been Apple's territory for two decades.

There is an irony sitting underneath the case. As its relationship with OpenAI soured, Apple turned to Google, striking a deal to rebuild Siri on a custom version of Gemini rather than on OpenAI's technology. The company suing OpenAI over hardware is, at the same time, handing its most visible software feature to OpenAI's biggest rival.

What is at stake

Trade-secret suits are hard to win and slow to resolve, and OpenAI has not yet filed its response. But the timing stings. OpenAI has spent the past month pushing deeper into consumer products, folding Codex and its agent tools into a single ChatGPT app and shipping the GPT-5.6 family. A public fight with Apple over how it staffed its hardware group is not the story it wanted told this summer.

For now the claims are just that, claims. Apple has to prove not only that its secrets walked out the door, but that they ended up inside OpenAI's products. What is already clear is that the most consequential partnership in consumer AI has turned into a courtroom fight.