Apple has filed a major lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that ex-Apple employees Tang Yew Tan and Chang Liu systematically stole trade secrets and shared confidential hardware information with the startup. The suit centers on Apple's concern that OpenAI is using stolen intellectual property to build its own AI hardware device and claims the behavior reflects a broad, institutional pattern at OpenAI rather than isolated incidents. Apple says the lawsuit is only the beginning of what discovery will reveal.
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Apple filed a 41-page lawsuit against OpenAI alleging that former Apple employees Tang Yew Tan and Chang Liu stole trade secrets and shared confidential information with the startup. Liu failed to return a work laptop, used an authentication bug to access Apple's network, and downloaded dozens of confidential hardware files; Tan, who spent about a quarter century at Apple overseeing iPhone and Apple Watch design, later interviewed current Apple employees at OpenAI using project codenames to extract information. Apple claims OpenAI has hired about 400 ex-Apple employees and that Tan coached new hires to conceal their move to OpenAI.
Why it matters
The lawsuit reveals a breakdown in the business relationship between the two companies—Apple partnered with OpenAI on ChatGPT integration in late 2024 but switched to Google Gemini as its AI partner in January 2026. The case centers on Apple's concern that OpenAI is using stolen proprietary information to build its own AI hardware device, and Apple contends the misconduct reflects "a coordinated pattern of misconduct at an institutional level" at OpenAI, suggesting systemic rather than isolated wrongdoing.
What to watch
Apple says the lawsuit filing is "the tip of the iceberg" and warns the discovery process will expose "misappropriation has been occurring on a scale many times greater than the several instances described" in the complaint. Apple retained Weil, Gotshal & Manges, LLP, one of the nation's top law firms, to handle the case.
The lawsuit emerges from a collapsed business relationship between Apple and OpenAI. The two companies had partnered in late 2024 to integrate ChatGPT into Apple's Siri voice assistant—a move Apple made because it was struggling to quickly deploy its own high-caliber AI models. However, the relationship deteriorated, most notably when Apple chose Google Gemini as its go-forward AI partner in January 2026. The timing of the lawsuit, filed after that strategic pivot, suggests Apple's investigation uncovered the alleged misconduct during or after it began exploring alternative AI partnerships.
Apple's allegations paint a picture of coordinated intelligence gathering. Chang Liu, who worked at Apple for eight years and joined OpenAI in January 2026, allegedly exploited an authentication bug he discovered on his unreturned company laptop to access Apple's network. Meanwhile, he maintained contact with Yu-Ting "Alyssa" Peng, who remained employed at Apple; Peng later joined OpenAI herself. According to the lawsuit, Liu directed Peng on which files to copy and helped her exfiltrate data before she left the company. Tang Yew Tan, who spent about a quarter century at Apple and eventually became Chief Hardware Officer at OpenAI, allegedly used hiring interviews as a vehicle to extract information from current Apple employees, asking them to bring CAD designs and prototypes and using Apple project codenames to prompt disclosure. Tan also allegedly coached new hires to conceal their departure to OpenAI so they could "stay at Apple as long as they can."
Apple frames this not as isolated misbehavior but as evidence of institutional practice at OpenAI. The company claims to have evidence of such misconduct "across seniority levels, technical disciplines, and departments" and alleges that OpenAI has been contacting Apple's supplier base, presumably to source components for its forthcoming AI hardware device—which CEO Sam Altman called "the coolest piece that the world will have ever seen" in May 2025 but has not publicly detailed since. Apple also notes that when it emailed OpenAI in February asking what steps it was taking to prevent confidential information from flowing between the companies, OpenAI did not respond. The case is being handled by Weil, Gotshal & Manges, LLP, and some analysts speculate it could define the future of both OpenAI and Apple, as well as the tech industry more broadly.
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