Apple filed suit against OpenAI and two former employees, alleging a systematic effort to steal hardware trade secrets.
The complaint, filed July 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, names OpenAI's commercial and nonprofit entities, its hardware subsidiary io Products, Chief Hardware Officer Tang Yew Tan, and former Apple engineer Chang Liu. Apple alleges that Tan — a 24-year Apple veteran who once led product design for the iPhone and Apple Watch — used internal codenames and demanded that job candidates bring physical components such as batteries, logic boards, and systems-in-package to "show and tell" interview sessions. Liu, meanwhile, allegedly kept an Apple-issued laptop after leaving the company in January 2026 and exploited an authentication vulnerability to keep pulling confidential engineering files from Apple's cloud storage. OpenAI's Director of Strategic Communications Drew Pusateri has denied that the company sought or used Apple's confidential information.
The timing is hard to ignore: OpenAI acquired io Products — Jony Ive's hardware startup — in a deal valued at roughly $6.5 billion in 2025, and its first consumer device is expected by the end of 2026. Apple isn't suing over ChatGPT; it's suing over alleged theft of battery systems, circuit boards, metal-finishing methods, and supply-chain relationships — exactly the kind of knowledge that separates a polished consumer device from a prototype. That transforms this from a typical trade-secret dispute into a direct shot at OpenAI's hardware ambitions before they launch.
Two years ago Apple and OpenAI were partners, with ChatGPT baked into Siri. Now they're headed to court — a reminder that in tech, today's integration partner is tomorrow's courtroom defendant.