GoKawiilApple has sued OpenAI, accusing the company of stealing its trade secrets.
In a complaint filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California on Friday, Apple alleges it "uncovered a pattern of theft of Apple's trade secrets by OpenAI employees who were formerly at Apple."
Along with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Apple named two individuals in the suit: OpenAI's Chief Hardware Officer Tang Tan, who previously worked at Apple for 24 years, and software engineer Chang Liu, who had worked at the company for 8 years before moving to OpenAI.
"At Apple, 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 in a statement. "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. We will always defend our teams' hard work and innovations, and we are taking all appropriate steps to do so."
Tech companies have been poaching top tech talent in a rapid-fire, billion-dollar hiring spree over the past few years as they race to develop advanced AI. But this is the first major lawsuit alleging that some of those job-hopping employees are illegally sharing their former employers' secrets with their new bosses.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
OpenAI has reportedly been looking to push ahead in its hardware ambitions, with products like AI earbuds and a smartphone. The move could provide OpenAI with a significant source of revenue beyond its subscription tiers, particularly as it burns through investor money. It also has a partnership with Apple that involves integrating ChatGPT into Siri for responding to more complex queries; it's not clear what'll become of that collaboration following the suit.
Former Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive's company, io Products, merged with OpenAI in 2025. Ive is not mentioned by name in the filing, though Apple points to articles about OpenAI's hardware goals and Ive's involvement.
The AI race is heating up, pushing companies to poach competitors' top employees. Getty Images
OpenAI is no stranger to lawsuits. Publishers have accused the company of scraping copyrighted works to train large language models like ChatGPT. They also allege OpenAI withholds evidence about how it trains its AI models. The safety of its products has also been questioned. In just one of several similar suits, a mother sued OpenAI earlier this year, claiming interactions with its chatbot led to her daughter's death.
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