Apple has sued OpenAI, accusing the company of stealing its trade secrets. 

In a complaint filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California on Friday, Apple alleges it “uncovered a pattern of theft of Apple’s trade secrets by OpenAI employees who were formerly at Apple.” 

Along with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Apple named two individuals in the suit: OpenAI’s Chief Hardware Officer Tang Tan, who previously worked at Apple for 24 years, and software engineer Chang Liu, who had worked at the company for 8 years before moving to OpenAI.

“At Apple, our teams are constantly developing breakthrough technologies to create the best products and services in the world, and protecting their work and intellectual property is something we take very seriously,” an Apple spokesperson said in a statement. “Recently, significant evidence has emerged suggesting individuals employed by OpenAI wrongfully took Apple’s secret and confidential information regarding our unreleased technologies, processes and products. We will always defend our teams’ hard work and innovations, and we are taking all appropriate steps to do so.”

Tech companies have been poaching top tech talent in a rapid-fire, billion-dollar hiring spree over the past few years as they race to develop advanced AI. But this is the first major lawsuit alleging that some of those job-hopping employees are illegally sharing their former employers’ secrets with their new bosses. 

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

OpenAI has reportedly been looking to push ahead in its hardware ambitions, with products like AI earbuds and a smartphone. The move could provide OpenAI with a significant source of revenue beyond its subscription tiers, particularly as it burns through investor money. It also has a partnership with Apple that involves integrating ChatGPT into Siri for responding to more complex queries; it’s not clear what’ll become of that collaboration following the suit. 

Former Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive’s company, io Products, merged with OpenAI in 2025. Ive is not mentioned by name in the filing, though Apple points to articles about OpenAI’s hardware goals and Ive’s involvement.  

OpenAI is no stranger to lawsuits. Publishers have accused the company of scraping copyrighted works to train large language models like ChatGPT. They also allege OpenAI withholds evidence about how it trains its AI models. The safety of its products has also been questioned. In just one of several similar suits, a mother sued OpenAI earlier this year, claiming interactions with its chatbot led to her daughter’s death.

This mounting scrutiny comes as OpenAI weighs plans to become a publicly traded company. It’s not yet clear when that could happen, but Apple’s suit could complicate those efforts — especially if it undermines OpenAI’s hardware goals.

The ‘tip of the iceberg’

In its filing, Apple said it “entrusted Mr. Tan with its most sensitive projects, trusted partner relationships, proprietary manufacturing techniques, and unreleased products” during his tenure as vice president of product design for iPhone and Apple Watch. 

“Apple’s investigation has revealed that Mr. Tan has been methodically using Apple’s confidential information to benefit OpenAI,” Apple alleged. 

That included emailing himself information about Apple’s suppliers before Tan left the company, according to the filing. He allegedly asked OpenAI applicants who currently worked at Apple about unannounced products during interviews, using the project codenames. Apple also alleges Tan told “job candidates still working for Apple to bring ‘actual parts’ from Apple to their interviews for ‘show and tell’ sessions in which he and his team at OpenAI can elicit still more Apple confidential information.”

In the complaint, Apple alleges Liu, who worked at Apple as a senior system electrical engineer, failed to return an Apple-issued work laptop. He then allegedly accessed Apple’s shared network folders and “surreptitiously accessed and downloaded dozens of Apple’s confidential hardware-related files, including voluminous, detailed information about unreleased products, engineering presentations, technical specifications and proprietary project data.” 

Apple called these instances “the tip of the iceberg” in the complaint, noting that it “lacks visibility into what’s been happening behind closed doors at OpenAI, where such misconduct is normalized and exemplified by leadership.” It alleged that “OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets.” 

“We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement. “We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s leadership style has been questioned before, causing the company’s board in 2023 to briefly fire him, saying he was misleading board members and investors. He was quickly returned to his role after employee backlash.

In February, when Apple’s investigation had just begun, the company says it wrote to OpenAI, voicing its concerns about improper access to Apple’s confidential information. It asked OpenAI about the precautions it was taking to avoid the issue and asked the company to investigate and correct the situation. Apple says OpenAI never responded. 

The goal of the suit is to stop OpenAI’s alleged theft of trade secrets, Apple notes. 

Apple has been broadening its AI partnerships, tapping into Google’s Gemini models to help power this year’s updates to Apple Intelligence and Siri. Meanwhile, reports suggest OpenAI may be considering legal action against Apple, alleging ChatGPT should have been more deeply integrated into Siri and other apps.