Apple sues OpenAI over alleged trade-secret theft

Apple has taken legal action against OpenAI, its io Products hardware startup, and former Apple engineers Chang Liu and Tang Tan. The lawsuit, filed on July 10 in a federal court in Northern California, says the defendants organized the systematic collection of industrial secrets to accelerate work on future consumer hardware.

Tang Tan spent 24 years at Apple, where he was vice president in charge of product design for the iPhone and Apple Watch. He now leads hardware at OpenAI and had previously helped create io Products, the hardware startup later acquired by OpenAI in May 2025.

The most specific claims concern Chang Liu, a former principal electrical systems engineer at Apple. Apple says Liu did not return at least one company laptop when he left and did not respond to exit-interview requests or to follow-up questions about whether confidential data had been deleted. Apple also says Liu helped a colleague, Alyssa Peng, prepare to join OpenAI by pointing her to internal files and showing her how to copy data without being noticed.