Apple sues OpenAI over hardware trade-secret theft, names Tang Tan and io Products

The iPhone maker's 41-page complaint in Northern California accuses OpenAI's chief hardware officer and a former Apple engineer of a coordinated scheme to funnel unreleased product data into OpenAI's device business.

Apple filed a 41-page complaint against OpenAI in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Friday, naming OpenAI Chief Hardware Officer Tang Tan, former Apple engineer Chang Liu, and OpenAI’s hardware subsidiary io Products as co-defendants in a coordinated trade-secret theft scheme. The suit lands roughly a year after OpenAI acquired io Products, the Jony Ive-cofounded hardware outfit, for $6.4 billion, and reframes what had been a marquee AI-and-hardware pairing as an adversarial one.

The complaint’s language is unusually direct. “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,” Apple writes. Tan, who spent roughly 24 years at Apple as Vice President of Product Design for iPhone and Apple Watch before leaving for io Products in 2024, allegedly used confidential Apple codenames while recruiting and coached departing staff on evading internal security. Apple further alleges candidates were “still working for Apple to bring actual parts from Apple to their interviews for show and tell sessions.”

Liu, an eight-year senior systems electrical engineer, left Apple for OpenAI in January 2026. Per CNN’s read of the filing, he failed to return his laptop, accessed a colleague’s computer after his departure, and downloaded dozens of confidential hardware files.

Apple says it wrote to OpenAI in February raising concerns and got no reply.

OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri pushed back. “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.”

The subtext is the collapsed 2024 partnership that put ChatGPT inside iOS. Apple’s forthcoming Siri overhaul will now run on Google’s Gemini, not an OpenAI model, and this filing formalizes what the vendor swap already implied. It also arrives at an inconvenient moment for OpenAI’s ambitions, roughly two months after the company prevailed against Elon Musk at trial and with an IPO widely anticipated. Litigation over the provenance of its device business is precisely the kind of overhang that gets priced into a roadshow.

Two years ago Apple and OpenAI were partners. Now Apple is the plaintiff.

Apple sues OpenAI over hardware trade-secret theft, names Tang Tan and io Products

Sources