Apple accused OpenAI on Friday of stealing secrets about products still in development, setting up a legal face-off between two of the world’s biggest tech companies.
In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the consumer tech giant said OpenAI, a leader in artificial intelligence that has a new hardware business, had asked job candidates from Apple to share details about secret projects and to bring device components and prototypes to their interviews.
Apple also accused an OpenAI employee of downloading internal documents from a laptop owned by the iPhone maker. That employee and OpenAI’s top hardware executive were named as defendants in the suit. Both used to work at Apple.
OpenAI used the confidential information to approach Apple’s manufacturing partners, including asking one partner to demonstrate Apple’s technique for finishing metal on its devices, the lawsuit said.
Apple sent a letter to OpenAI in February to raise concerns that confidential information could be “making its way to OpenAI’s business improperly,” according to the suit. OpenAI did not respond, Apple said.
“OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets,” Apple wrote in its lawsuit.
OpenAI pushed back against the accusations in a statement. “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets,” a spokesman, Drew Pusateri, said. “We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.”
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied those claims.)
Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI sharply escalates tensions between the two tech titans, whose high-profile partnership had already begun to unravel.
Apple remains largely on the sidelines of A.I., even as other technology giants spend hundreds of billions of dollars building A.I. models and data centers and as start-ups push the envelope on the technology.
To help catch up, Apple struck a deal with OpenAI in 2024 to use the A.I. start-up’s technology to overhaul its products, including its digital assistant, Siri. But OpenAI grew disappointed by how Apple integrated ChatGPT, and has even considered legal action. In January, Apple said it was teaming up with Google to power Siri and its other A.I. products.
Adding to the tension, OpenAI, which has confidentially filed for an initial public offering, is creating a new family of hardware products itself.
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, has long held ambitions to produce A.I.-powered devices. The nascent technology can be worn like jewelry or placed in a pocket — offering users features like audio and video recording, or responses to voice commands.
Mr. Altman previously backed a now defunct start-up called Humane, which built an A.I. device that users pinned to their clothing.
Last year, OpenAI paid $6.5 billion to buy IO, which at the time was a one-year-old design studio founded by Jony Ive, Apple’s former longtime design head. During his 27 years at Apple, Mr. Ive developed Apple’s minimalist aesthetic and worked with the company’s co-founder Steve Jobs to revolutionize the smartphone.
Before the acquisition, Mr. Altman worked with Mr. Ive to develop wearable devices that could run the start-up’s A.I. technology. The two men have previously declined to discuss what such devices could look like or how they might work.
The deal brought Mr. Ive, who is not named in the lawsuit, and his team of roughly 55 engineers and researchers inside OpenAI. That group included Tang Tan, a former Apple executive and IO co-founder. Mr. Tan had spent 24 years at Apple, leading design for the iPhone and Apple Watch before his departure. He is now OpenAI’s chief hardware officer.
In its lawsuit on Friday, Apple accused Mr. Tan of coaching his hires from Apple on how to evade Apple’s security processes for departing employees.
Engineers and designers have steadily departed Apple for OpenAI since it acquired IO. More than 400 former Apple employees now work for OpenAI, according to the lawsuit.
Mr. Tan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Apple accused another former employee, Chang Liu, of using a former colleague’s Apple-owned laptop to gain access to and download technical documents while working at OpenAI. Mr. Liu told the Apple employee what information about unannounced products she should study before job interviews, Apple said.
Mr. Liu also planned to get access to internal documents through an Apple-owned laptop that he didn’t return when he left the company, according to the lawsuit.
Mr. Liu did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
OpenAI had misled the manufacturing company it approached to learn about the metal finishing technique to believe it had Apple’s permission to view it, according to the lawsuit.
Apple is seeking an injunction that would prevent OpenAI from possessing, using or sharing Apple’s trade secrets, as well as an order requiring OpenAI to return Apple’s intellectual property.
Apple has previously sued former employees turned rivals. In 2019, the company sued Gerard Williams III, its former chief chip architect, for breaking his employment contract as he worked to create a chip start-up, Nuvia. Apple dropped that lawsuit in 2023.
