Enterprise

Apple sues OpenAI over alleged trade-secret theft, naming hardware chief Tang Tan

The complaint accuses OpenAI, its Chief Hardware Officer, a former Apple engineer, and io Products of a coordinated scheme to lift hardware designs, supply-chain data, and unreleased product information.

By Asher Glick · Enterprise software desk · 2026-07-14 · 3 min read

Photo: Unsplash / Tingey Injury Law Firm — A wooden judge's gavel resting on a sound block, symbolizing a federal court filing.

Apple sued OpenAI, its Chief Hardware Officer Tang Tan, former engineer Chang Liu, and the Tan-and-Ive hardware startup io Products on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging a coordinated effort to move hardware designs, supply-chain strategy, and unreleased product details out of Cupertino and into OpenAI’s nascent devices operation. The complaint doesn’t read like a garden-variety poaching dispute. It reads like Apple asserting that its 24-year hardware playbook is being reconstituted, part by part, inside its most important AI counterparty.

The specifics are unusually granular. Tan, a 24-year Apple veteran who ran product design for iPhone and Apple Watch, is accused of using confidential Apple project code names during recruiting, asking candidates to bring “actual parts” from Apple to “show and tell” interview sessions, and coaching departing employees on how to evade Apple’s security procedures. Liu, an eight-year senior systems electrical engineer who left in 2026, allegedly kept his Apple laptop, exploited an authentication bug to re-enter the internal network, downloaded “dozens” of confidential hardware files, and advised other Apple interviewees on what to study.

The context is what makes this filing land the way it does.

OpenAI acquired io Products for roughly $6.4 to $6.5 billion, absorbing the Jony Ive design orbit whole. More than 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI, per the complaint. Apple sent a warning letter in February 2026 and got no reply. The 2024 ChatGPT-in-iOS partnership has cooled to the point where Apple’s forthcoming Siri update is built on Google’s Gemini. That’s the strategic frame: the two companies aren’t partners drifting apart, they’re competitors already relitigating the terms.

The timing is also legible. OpenAI is roughly two months past winning the Elon Musk jury trial over its for-profit conversion, and approaching an expected IPO. An injunction, which Apple is seeking, could slow the hardware operation at exactly the moment its S-1 needs the story to be clean.

OpenAI’s response was terse. “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere,” a spokesperson said. It’s the sort of statement written for the eventual prospectus, not the docket.

Sources