Apple Sues OpenAI, Alleging Trade-Secret Theft to Build AI Hardware
Apple has sued OpenAI in federal court in Northern California, alleging trade-secret theft and breach of contract by former Apple employees who jumped to the AI lab and, it says, took confidential designs to help build consumer hardware that would rival the iPhone. The complaint names OpenAI's hardware chief Tang Tan, a former Apple product-design VP behind the iPhone and Apple Watch, and Chang Liu, an ex-Apple engineer who allegedly kept his company laptop and downloaded more than 1,000 pages of confidential files. It is a striking reversal for two firms that partnered in 2024 to put ChatGPT inside Apple Intelligence, and it lands as OpenAI pushes into hardware built around the io startup co-founded by Jony Ive that it bought for about $6.5 billion.