Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI on Friday alleging that the artificial intelligence company stole the company’s trade secrets in an attempt to create its own hardware device.
The lawsuit claims that OpenAI stole from Apple employees, forcing them to hand over confidential materials, product designs and other confidential information.
“Recently, significant evidence has emerged suggesting that individuals employed by OpenAI wrongly misappropriated Apple’s secret and confidential information about our unreleased technologies, processes, and products,” an Apple spokesperson said in an email.
Drew Pusateri, a spokesperson for OpenAI, said the company was reviewing the court file. “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets,” he added. “We remain focused on creating innovative technology that empowers people around the world.”
Apple’s lawsuit is a sea change for the two tech giants, which announced a major partnership in 2024. That deal involved Apple integrating OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, into operating systems for iPhones, iPads and Macs. But when Apple introduced its revamped Siri voice assistant last month, its AI component was based on Google’s Gemini AI model, rather than ChatGPT.
Tensions between the two companies began to boil last year when OpenAI spent $6.4 billion to acquire a hardware startup founded by former Apple design guru Jony Ive, signaling that the AI titan was moving into hardware. Ive’s startup, io Products, is also named in Apple’s lawsuit.
“OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to the core by its unlawful reliance on misappropriated trade secrets,” Apple wrote in its complaint.
The lawsuit alleges that several former Apple employees joined OpenAI and took the company’s trade secrets. Tang Yew Tan, OpenAI’s hardware director and former Apple vice president, is named in the lawsuit. Apple alleges that Tan brought information about Apple’s suppliers to OpenAI and encouraged those interviewed at OpenAI to disclose confidential company information.
“He has directed candidates still working for Apple to bring ‘real parts’ of Apple to their interviews for ‘show and tell’ sessions where he and his team at OpenAI can obtain even more confidential information from Apple,” Apple’s complaint reads.
Chang Liu, another former Apple employee named in the lawsuit who was hired at OpenAI, is accused of taking an Apple laptop when he left. Apple alleges that Liu used an authentication error to breach the company’s internal network and downloaded “dozens of sensitive files related to Apple hardware.”
The Apple spokesperson said: “Our teams constantly develop innovative technologies to create the best products and services in the world, and protecting their work and intellectual property is something we take very seriously.”
The company is seeking damages and a court order preventing OpenAI from possessing or using its trade secrets.
