Apple Sues OpenAI Over Alleged Theft of Hardware Trade Secrets

Apple has filed a federal lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the AI company of orchestrating a systematic campaign to steal Apple's trade secrets to advance OpenAI's own consumer hardware ambitions ¹⁷.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Jose, California, alleges that OpenAI poached Apple employees and extracted confidential information as part of an effort to build its own device ⁷. Apple said it uncovered "a pattern of theft of Apple's trade secrets by OpenAI employees who were formerly at Apple" ¹⁸.

The complaint names four defendants: OpenAI; IO Products, the hardware startup founded by Jony Ive that OpenAI acquired in 2025; Tang Tan, OpenAI's chief hardware officer; and Chang Liu, who joined OpenAI from Apple in January ¹⁸. Tan is a 24-year Apple veteran who recently served as vice president of the Apple Watch before leaving in 2024 to work on Ive's project ³⁴.

Among the most striking allegations: Apple claims that when its employees interviewed for jobs at OpenAI, Tan allegedly asked them to bring components they were working on and unreleased product samples to the interviews ³⁴. The complaint also contains allegations that employees joked about unauthorized access to Apple's systems ². More broadly, Apple accuses OpenAI of stealing confidential documents, spying on hardware prototypes, and tricking one of Apple's trusted partners into performing a proprietary product design technique ³⁴.

The lawsuit marks a dramatic escalation in tensions between two companies that partnered in 2024 ⁷. That partnership had positioned OpenAI's AI capabilities alongside Apple's device ecosystem, making the trade-secret allegations particularly fraught.

[ANALYSIS] The suit centers on OpenAI's push into consumer hardware — a domain where Apple holds deep institutional knowledge across industrial design, miniaturization, and supply-chain management. The named defendants' backgrounds suggest Apple views the alleged theft as targeting hardware engineering expertise rather than AI model development.

The filing also drew public commentary from other industry figures. Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman exchanged criticisms on X following the lawsuit's disclosure ⁶. Altman argued that Musk was focused on him because of a new OpenAI model release ⁶. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit alongside Altman and others, left OpenAI's board in 2018 and later sued Altman over the company's conversion to a for-profit structure ⁶. A jury ruled in favor of Altman in that case, and Musk has said he would appeal ⁶.

[ANALYSIS] The Apple lawsuit opens a second major legal front for OpenAI, which is already contending with the Musk litigation on appeal. Unlike the Musk case, which centers on corporate governance and nonprofit obligations, Apple's complaint targets alleged misappropriation of proprietary engineering knowledge — a claim that, if substantiated, could directly constrain OpenAI's hardware roadmap.