Apple is suing OpenAI and two of its former employees who currently work at the AI company for stealing its trade secrets. In a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court, Apple alleges extensive misconduct by the company it once partnered with, calling its hardware business “rotten to the core.”
The lawsuit also names io Products, the hardware startup led by Jony Ive and acquired by OpenAI last year, as complicit in the theft of trade secrets. It does not mention Ive by name, but describes the organization as complicit in a “coordinated pattern of institutional misconduct” within OpenAI.
The filing also names Chang Liu, a former senior systems electrical engineer at Apple, and Tang Yew Tan, a former Apple vice president who is now OpenAI’s chief hardware officer. Apple claims that Liu and Tan shared trade secrets with OpenAI. Liu, according to Apple’s lawyers, “surreptitiously accessed and downloaded dozens of confidential files related to Apple hardware, including voluminous and detailed information about unreleased products, technical presentations, technical specifications, and proprietary project data.”
Apple also claims that Tan “has asked candidates who still work for Apple to bring ‘real pieces’ of Apple to their interviews for ‘show and tell’ sessions during which he and his team at OpenAI can elicit even more confidential information from Apple.” In total, Apple claims that more than 400 of its former employees have accepted jobs at OpenAI and that the company’s interview process is structured “to attempt to solicit additional confidential information about Apple.”
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations. The company “never responded” when Apple raised concerns, the lawsuit says.
In the filing, Apple says it is likely unaware of the extent of OpenAI’s misconduct. “However, this much is clear: at every level, from its technical team members to its chief hardware officer, and in coordination with its business partners, OpenAI stole Apple’s trade secrets and confidential information,” it says. “As a result, OpenAI’s burgeoning hardware business now rests on the flimsiest of foundations, rotten to the core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets.”
The lawsuit comes as Apple continues to collaborate with OpenAI for Apple Intelligence. In a footnote, Apple says its existing agreement, which allows the iPhone maker to integrate chatGPT into its devices, “is not at issue here” and that its allegations of trade secret theft have “no connection” to that agreement.
