Features

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

The 41-page complaint accuses OpenAI's leadership of orchestrating a systematic campaign to lift Apple's unreleased hardware designs — and lands weeks after OpenAI confidentially filed for its IPO.

By Markus Voskuhl · Features & longform · 2026-07-19 · 4 min read

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

Apple filed a 41-page complaint against OpenAI on July 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing the company of a coordinated campaign to strip Apple’s unreleased hardware program for parts. The timing isn’t incidental. OpenAI confidentially filed its S-1 about a month earlier, roughly a week after Anthropic filed its own. A trade-secret suit landing in that window is narrative management by legal calendar.

The named defendant most likely to matter is Tang Tan, now OpenAI’s Chief Hardware Officer, previously VP of product design for the iPhone and Apple Watch across 24 years at Apple. According to the complaint, Tan used Apple’s confidential project code names during OpenAI’s recruiting, asked candidates to bring Apple hardware components into interviews, coached departing Apple employees on evading the company’s security procedures, and pressed for details on unannounced products. Chang Liu, a senior systems electrical engineer at Apple for eight years, allegedly kept his Apple-issued laptop after leaving in 2026 and used it to download confidential technical documents, then coached other applicants on what to study.

The color comes from the internal texture. OpenAI allegedly approached a supplier with confidential Apple design and battery details, deploying “internal terminology” that “only Apple-insiders would know to ask.” An internal Apple document marked “Need to know” was reportedly circulated to new OpenAI hires with guidance on avoiding the “dreaded walkout,” Apple’s practice of immediately removing employees after they give notice. One internal message quoted in the complaint reads: “LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage], so funny.”

Apple states that “discovery will expose that the misappropriation has been occurring on a scale many times greater than the several instances described.” OpenAI’s spokesperson, in Fortune: “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.”

Jony Ive, whose io Products was folded into OpenAI last year in a $6.5 billion deal, isn’t named as a defendant. That omission is its own signal. Apple isn’t attacking the celebrity designer; it’s attacking the recruiting apparatus and the hardware chief. This is the DuPont v. Kolon posture, trade-secret litigation aimed at the operational spine of a competitor’s product roadmap, filed at the exact moment public-market disclosure begins to constrain what the defendant can say back.

Sources