Apple on Tuesday asked a federal court to stop OpenAI from building AI hardware on Apple technology, widening a trade-secrets fight that began with a handful of defecting engineers and now reaches into how both companies control their own data.
The preliminary-injunction request names senior systems engineer Chang Liu, chief hardware officer Tang Yew Tan, the OpenAI Foundation and io, a device startup co-founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive, as defendants, according to court filings.
In its latest filing, Apple said its investigation has turned up 11 more former employees who may be involved. Some met with Liu and a colleague identified in the papers as Peng before job interviews with OpenAI and discussed details of unreleased Apple products, the company said. Others screenshotted confidential documents ahead of those meetings. A few contacted Apple to return work devices only after the suit was filed, Apple said.
Apple said in the filing that the investigation remains open as it continues to trace former employees who had access to sensitive projects. The company has portrayed the departures as a coordinated effort by OpenAI to assemble a hardware team from the people who knew Apple’s plans best.
The suit also names the OpenAI Foundation, the nonprofit entity that oversees the company behind ChatGPT. Legal experts said naming the foundation widens the case beyond the for-profit arm and its executives, and makes it harder for OpenAI to argue that the dispute is limited to a few former employees.
OpenAI pushed back the same day, saying several of the accusations contain factual errors. Its outside lawyers mixed up Asian surnames and sent emails to the wrong recipients, the company said. OpenAI said it told Apple five months ago that it was “working to resolve” the matter and heard nothing further until the lawsuit arrived. The company said it does not hold Apple’s trade secrets, does not need them, and is focused on building new products.
The Information reported this week that Apple’s own data rules have holes. Some former employees kept access to confidential files, including product-launch plans, through personal iCloud accounts after leaving, the outlet said. The same week, TechCrunch reported that Apple is challenging a fresh British government request to build a backdoor into iCloud, a demand Apple has resisted for years under the country’s Investigatory Powers Act. Apple has publicly argued that weakening encryption for law enforcement exposes all users to attackers.
The case began earlier this year, when Apple accused OpenAI of recruiting employees who had worked on its most closely guarded projects. OpenAI denied the core claims and filed a countersuit. The injunction request goes further than the original complaint: it asks a judge to bar OpenAI from developing AI devices on Apple-derived technology while the case proceeds.
Winning an injunction requires Apple to show it is likely to prevail and that it would suffer irreparable harm without one, lawyers who litigate trade secrets said. That second question tends to decide cases like this, they said. Once knowledge of a product’s inner workings moves to a rival, no later damages award restores the old order.
The addition of io gives the case a high-profile wrinkle. Ive, the designer of the iPhone, left Apple in 2019 and has since partnered with OpenAI on a consumer device, according to people familiar with the project. The startup has said little about the product. Naming it a defendant suggests Apple sees a connection between the departed engineers and OpenAI’s hardware ambitions.
The fight is playing out against a broader hiring war. AI labs are competing for a thin pool of engineers who have built consumer hardware, a skill set forged in an industry that long shipped phones rather than models. Trade-secret lawyers said the outcome could define how the industry treats an engineer’s knowledge of a product: as a portable asset or as protected property. OpenAI’s lawyers will also test whether Apple can show its former employees actually carried specific secrets into the company, rather than general expertise.
The iCloud disclosures complicate Apple’s position. Security researchers said departing employees keeping file access is common at fast-growing companies, where access controls lag head count. The detail hands OpenAI’s lawyers a counter-narrative: Apple, too, let secrets walk out the door.
The case has drawn unusual attention in Silicon Valley because the two companies are both customers and rivals. Apple has integrated OpenAI’s models into its devices, yet the two now fight over the same ground: assistants that can see, hear and act. Industry executives said the outcome will shape whether companies trust each other with the engineers who build those systems.
Neither company commented beyond its filings and statements. No hearing date has been set, and both sides are expected to file further briefs in the coming weeks. The case is likely to run well into next year, with the injunction fight offering an early read on how the broader dispute will go.
