Former Apple employees stole OpenAI trade secrets, the lawsuit alleges

Apple has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the company of stealing its trade secrets.

In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Friday, Apple claims it “discovered a pattern of theft of Apple trade secrets by OpenAI employees who were formerly employed by Apple.”

Besides ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Apple named two people in the lawsuit: Tang Tan, OpenAI’s chief hardware officer, who previously worked at Apple for 24 years, and software engineer Chang Liu, who worked at the company for 8 years before moving to OpenAI.

It was technology companies Poaching for technical talent In a billion dollar flash fire Hiring spree Over the past few years they have been racing to develop advanced artificial intelligence. But this is the first major lawsuit alleging that some of these job-hopping employees illegally shared secrets from their former employers with their new bosses.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, the parent company of CNET, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that it infringed Ziff Davis’s copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

In the filing, Apple says it “entrusted Mr. Tan with its most critical projects, trusted partner relationships, proprietary manufacturing technologies, and unreleased products” during his tenure as vice president of product design for iPhone and Apple Watch.

“Apple’s investigation revealed that Mr. Tan was systematically using confidential Apple information to benefit OpenAI,” Apple claims.

This included emailing information about Apple’s suppliers before Tan left the company, according to the filing. He allegedly asked OpenAI applicants currently working at Apple about unannounced products during interviews, using project codenames. Apple also alleges that Tan told “job candidates still working for Apple to bring ‘actual parts’ of Apple to their interviews for ‘show-and-tell’ sessions where he and his team at OpenAI could obtain more confidential Apple information.”

In the complaint, Apple alleges that Liu, who worked at Apple as a senior electrical system engineer, failed to return his Apple-issued work laptop. He then allegedly gained access to Apple’s shared network folders, and “surreptitiously accessed and downloaded dozens of confidential files related to Apple devices, including voluminous and detailed information about unreleased products, engineering presentations, technical specifications, and proprietary project data.”

Apple called these cases “the tip of the iceberg” in the complaint, stating that it “lacked visibility into what was happening behind closed doors at OpenAI, where this misconduct was normalized and reified by leadership.” “OpenAI’s startup hardware business now rests on shaky foundations, corrupted to the core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets,” it claimed.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s leadership style has been questioned before, causing the company’s board to fire in 2023. He shot him brieflySaying it misleads board members and investors. He quickly returned to his position after a violent reaction from the employee.

In February, when Apple’s investigation had just begun, the company said it wrote to OpenAI, expressing concerns about improper access to confidential Apple information. OpenAI asked what precautions it was taking to avoid the issue, and asked the company to investigate and rectify the situation. Apple says OpenAI never responded.

Apple indicates that the goal of the lawsuit is to stop OpenAI’s alleged theft of trade secrets.

OpenAI was reportedly looking forward to it Moving forward with its hardware ambitionsWith products like AI earbuds and smartphone. The move could provide OpenAI with a significant revenue stream beyond its subscription levels, especially since it eats up investors’ money. It also has a partnership with Apple that includes integration ChatGPT into Siri To respond to more complex inquiries; It’s not clear what will happen to that partnership after the lawsuit.

Jony Ive, former chief design officer at Apple, io products, Integrated with OpenAI In 2025. My name is not mentioned in the file, although Apple says so Articles About the goals of OpenAI devices and sharing IVF.

OpenAI is no stranger to lawsuits. The publishers accused the company of Cancellation of copyrighted works To train large language models like ChatGPT. As they claim OpenAI withholds evidence On how to train its AI models. The safety of its products has also been questioned. In just one of many similar lawsuits, a mother sued OpenAI earlier this year, alleging interactions with its chatbot It led to the death of her daughter.

This increased scrutiny comes as OpenAI considers its plans Become a public joint stock company. It’s not yet clear when that might happen, but Apple’s lawsuit could complicate those efforts, especially if it undermines the goals of OpenAI’s hardware.

Apple is expanding its AI partnerships, leveraging Google’s Gemini models Power help This year’s updates to Apple Intelligence and Siri. Meanwhile, reports suggest that OpenAI might as well Consider taking legal action against AppleThey claim that ChatGPT should have been more deeply integrated into Siri and other apps.