Apple has told a court it has evidence that a former employee destroyed data after learning he was under investigation for allegedly stealing company information for OpenAI.
In a new filing, Apple describes what it calls 'shocking evidence' of the theft and cover-up. According to Apple, once the employee suspected he was being investigated, he moved to erase material connected to the alleged data theft. The company is treating that deletion as an aggravating factor stacked on top of the original theft accusation, arguing it caught him trying to cover his tracks. Apple has been unusually public about the filing, a sign it wants the narrative as much as the verdict.
This is the latest flashpoint in a broader pattern: OpenAI has spent the past couple of years pulling engineers out of Apple's ranks, even as Apple's own generative-AI ambitions, including a reworked Siri, have repeatedly slipped. Layering a cover-up allegation onto a data-theft claim raises the stakes well beyond a routine trade-secrets fight, since destroying evidence carries its own legal exposure no matter how the underlying claim resolves.
Apple calling its own evidence 'shocking' is the language of a litigant trying to win a case, not a neutral account of what happened.