Apple has taken OpenAI to federal court over alleged trade secret theft.
Apple filed a 41-page complaint in Northern California federal court last Friday, accusing former Apple employees of lifting confidential information — covering product development, manufacturing, supply chain, and technology research — and handing it to OpenAI. The lawsuit lands as OpenAI is already deep in litigation from multiple directions, including a high-profile suit from Elon Musk. Apple's filing puts OpenAI's hardware ambitions directly in the crosshairs.
For OpenAI, timing matters. The company is pushing hard into hardware and has been burning capital on physical-product bets that depend on proprietary manufacturing knowledge. A credible trade-secret case from Apple — whose supply chain is arguably the most tightly guarded in consumer technology — creates legal exposure that could complicate both those efforts and any path toward a public offering.
Apple rarely sues publicly over IP; it typically prefers quiet settlements or injunctions. That it chose a 41-page federal complaint suggests the alleged leaks were serious enough to warrant an aggressive response — or that Apple wants a public record of where the blame sits.