Cupertino, California– Apple on Friday accused OpenAI of stealing trade secrets as it seeks to build its own hardware for ChatGPT, marking a major rupture in the partnership between the iPhone maker and the AI company.
Apple said in the lawsuit filed in federal court in California that the theft of its trade secrets was part of a “coordinated pattern of corporate-level misconduct” by OpenAI.
“This case concerns former Apple employees stealing Apple trade secrets for OpenAI,” the filing says. “Apple is filing this lawsuit to put an end to it.”
Two former Apple employees who now work at OpenAI were also named as defendants. One is Tang Tan, who helped design the iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPod and is now chief hardware officer at OpenAI. The other is Zhang Liu, a former electrical engineer who Apple says was entrusted with some of its most sensitive product development efforts before Liu left Apple to join OpenAI earlier this year.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The lawsuit accuses OpenAI of looking for hardware shortcuts
OpenAI has never said exactly what kind of device it’s building, but has described it as an attempt to find a new way to interact with AI that goes beyond “traditional products and interfaces.” It’s part of a broader effort to create a physical embodiment of the latest advances in artificial intelligence, a decade after Amazon and Google brought screenless speakers into homes.
The lawsuit alleges that the effort was built in part on knowledge stolen from Apple.
“OpenAI’s startup hardware business now rests on shaky foundations, corrupted to its core by its unlawful reliance on misappropriated trade secrets,” the lawsuit says.
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Apple said it has begun investigating whether some of its confidential information was compromised and has “discovered a pattern of theft” of Apple trade secrets by former employees who moved on to positions at OpenAI.
The lawsuit alleges that both Liu and Tan had access to confidential Apple information and files while working at OpenAI. Among the allegations, Apple alleges that Liu accessed and downloaded several confidential files related to the devices on an Apple-issued device that he kept after he left. It also alleges that Tan directed job candidates still working for Apple to bring “actual parts” of Apple to their OpenAI interviews.
Apple said in the lawsuit that it reached out to OpenAI in February to raise its concerns early in its investigation, but said OpenAI did not respond.
An Apple spokesperson said in a statement on Friday that the company “will always champion the hard work and innovations of our team, and we are taking all appropriate steps to do so.”
The partnership with Apple has moved towards competition
Apple sought help from OpenAI several years ago because it was late to the AI race sparked by the arrival of ChatGPT. The two companies partnered in 2024 to use ChatGPT as an AI-powered “answer engine” on the iPhone when built-in Siri technology couldn’t meet a user’s needs. More recently, the partnership has veered toward rivalry.
As part of its expansion efforts, OpenAI has hired former Apple designer Jony Ive to oversee a project to build an AI-powered device that many analysts believe could eventually challenge Apple’s products.
Last year, OpenAI announced that it was working on a secret hardware collaboration with Eve to pioneer a new way to communicate with AI. As part of the collaboration, OpenAI acquired io Products, a product and engineering company co-founded by Ive, Tan and two others, in a deal valued at approximately $6.5 billion.
This led to the little-known technology startup iyO Inc. sued Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for trademark infringement due to the similar name and past interactions of the companies. The startup also sued one of its former employees for allegedly leaking a secret drawing of an unreleased iyO product, and later added trade secret theft allegations against Tan to the lawsuit.
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Apple’s lawsuit also names io Products as a defendant. Lawyers who previously represented the company and Tan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Apple’s lawsuit comes as OpenAI has been exploring whether to go public on Wall Street and faces stiff competition from rivals including Anthropic and Google.
OpenAI winnowed some of its commercial projects earlier this year to focus on its core product, ChatGPT, but continued to pursue hardware, the company’s chief financial officer told The Associated Press this spring.
“We have consumer devices coming at the end of this year,” CFO Sarah Friar told the AP in April.
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