Apple filed a 41-page trade-secret complaint against OpenAI on July 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, naming as co-defendants OpenAI’s chief hardware officer Tang Tan and former Apple engineer Chang Liu. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman first reported the filing. The framing Apple chose is unusually broad: “At every level, from members of its Technical Staff to its Chief Hardware Officer, and in coordination with business partners, OpenAI has been stealing Apple’s trade secrets and confidential information.”

That’s not a stray-engineer complaint. That’s an allegation of institutional design.

The specifics, as TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez laid out, are lurid. Tan, who spent 24 years at Apple culminating as VP of product design for iPhone and Apple Watch, is accused of using Apple’s internal code names while recruiting, asking candidates to bring Apple hardware components to interviews, coaching employees on how to evade Apple’s security, and soliciting details on unannounced products. Liu, an eight-year veteran, allegedly kept his Apple-issued laptop after leaving for OpenAI in 2026, downloaded confidential engineering documents from it, and briefed other Apple staff on what to study before OpenAI interviews. Apple also alleges OpenAI directed hardware partners to use a metal-finishing technique Apple invented, while implying Apple’s blessing.

Jony Ive’s io Products, which OpenAI acquired last year in a $6.5 billion deal, is named in the complaint. Ive himself isn’t.

OpenAI’s public response was terse: “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.” A follow-up on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast added that OpenAI is “not aware of any evidence that this complaint has merit.” Per the complaint, Apple sent a warning letter in February 2026 and got no response.

The timing is the story. OpenAI is walking toward an IPO, staring at Anthropic and Google across the model market, and Sam Altman said in November the company had finished its first hardware prototypes, reportedly a mobile smart speaker. Meanwhile Apple’s updated Siri, due this fall, runs on Google’s Gemini. The two companies aren’t partners anymore. They’re competitors with a discovery calendar.

Sources