Apple on Friday sued OpenAI and two executives in the Northern District of California, accusing them of stealing Apple trade secrets to help OpenAI develop hardware.
The suit names OpenAI Chief Hardware Officer Tang Tan and technical staffer Chang Liu and alleges both formerly worked at Apple and took proprietary information to aid OpenAI's hardware efforts.
The complaint says Tan worked at Apple for more than two decades and helped design the iPhone, Apple Watch and iPod.
The complaint says Liu, a former Apple electrical engineer for eight years, kept a work-issued Apple laptop after leaving and discovered a bug that allowed him to access Apple's cloud file storage; "LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage], so funny," he wrote, the complaint says.
The filing alleges Liu accessed and downloaded dozens of confidential files from Apple's network while developing hardware for OpenAI, many labeled confidential, the complaint says.
The suit accuses Tan of using Apple's internal codenames to elicit information from potential OpenAI job candidates, telling them to bring "actual parts" for "show and tell" and circulating a "Need to Know" Apple offboarding document to teach new hires how to dodge exit security checks, the complaint alleges.
The complaint alleges OpenAI approached Apple's trusted partners with confidential Apple information and that one partner demonstrated a trade secret metal-finishing technique after being misled to believe they had Apple's permission.
An Apple spokesperson said the company will "always defend our teams' hard work and innovations, and we are taking all appropriate steps to do so."
The complaint criticizes OpenAI for abandoning its nonprofit roots in favor of maximizing profits, says the company pursued "an aggressive campaign to bring hardware devices to the market" and asserts OpenAI "resorted to taking unlawful shortcuts" under pressure to deliver its first hardware product.
Apple asks the court to stop the defendants from possessing, using or disclosing Apple trade secrets, to preserve and return Apple materials and for damages for loss caused by trade secret misappropriation and breach of contract.
The complaint says more than 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI and notes that Apple has a partnership to integrate ChatGPT into its products.
The filings say Jony Ive, Apple's former chief design officer who began collaborating with OpenAI in 2023, co-founded io Products and was not named in the suit; OpenAI announced its acquisition of io in May 2025 and Ive now leads OpenAI's device work, the complaint says.
"This lawsuit and the discovery process are needed to expose and begin to remedy the pervasive theft of Apple's trade secrets," the complaint states.