Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI on Friday, alleging that the artificial intelligence company stole trade secrets to advance its hardware business plans. The suit claims OpenAI recruited Apple employees and persuaded them to share confidential material, product designs, and proprietary information.
"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," Apple said in a statement. OpenAI's spokesperson said the company was reviewing the filing and denied the allegations. "We have no interest in other companies' trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere," the spokesperson stated.
The lawsuit represents a dramatic reversal for the two companies, which announced a major partnership in 2024 to integrate OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot into Apple's operating systems. However, when Apple recently unveiled its redesigned Siri voice assistant, it used Google's Gemini AI model rather than ChatGPT.
The tension between the companies intensified last year when OpenAI spent 6.4 billion dollars to acquire io Products, a hardware startup founded by Jony Ive, a legendary Apple design executive. Apple's complaint names both OpenAI and io Products as defendants.
"OpenAI's nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets," Apple wrote in its complaint.
The suit names specific former Apple employees now working at OpenAI. Tang Yew Tan, who serves as OpenAI's chief hardware officer and previously worked as a vice-president at Apple, allegedly directed job candidates still employed at Apple to bring "actual parts" from Apple to interviews for "show and tell" sessions. This conduct allowed Tan and his team to obtain additional confidential information, according to the complaint.
Another former Apple employee, Chang Liu, is accused of taking an Apple laptop when he left the company and using an authentication vulnerability to breach Apple's internal network. Liu allegedly downloaded dozens of confidential files related to Apple's hardware development.
The complaint alleges that this misconduct was directed by OpenAI's senior leadership and targeted trade secrets across multiple levels of Apple's organization. Apple is seeking damages and a court order preventing OpenAI from possessing or using its stolen trade secrets.
"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. The case highlights growing tensions over intellectual property protection as technology companies compete intensely for engineering talent and race to develop new artificial intelligence hardware.