Apple Sues OpenAI, io, and Former Employees, Alleging Theft of Trade Secrets

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:

The lawsuit names Chang Liu and Tang Tan as two of the defendants. Tang Tan served as VP of product design at Apple, leading iPhone and Apple Watch product design. He departed the company in February 2024 to work with Jony Ive. Chang Liu, meanwhile, worked at Apple for eight years and was a senior system electrical engineer before departing to join OpenAI in January 2026.

Apple’s lawsuit also names OpenAI and io Products as defendants.

OpenAI’s hardware efforts are being led by Jony Ive, Apple’s former chief design officer. OpenAI acquired Ive’s startup io as part of a $6.5 billion deal last year. OpenAI’s takeover of the company included more than 50 engineers, developers, and other employees. In its original announcement, OpenAI touted that Ive founded io in collaboration with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tan.

Hankey led Apple’s design team for several years after Ive departed the company. She departed in 2022 before reuniting with Ive as part of io. Cannon also previously worked at Apple.

Ive, Hankey, and Cannon are not personally mentioned anywhere in Apple’s initial filing today.

Here’s a copy of Apple’s complaint I’m hosting. You should read the complaint to form your own opinion on the allegations. The complaint goes so far out of its way to avoid mentioning Ive or Hankey by name that it describes io’s founding thus, on page 4 (italics added):

OpenAI and its cohorts have been engaging in a coordinated pattern of misconduct at an institutional level as well. This includes io (which OpenAI acquired), a venture co-founded by Mr. Tan and other former Apple leaders. The Corporate Defendants, with or through their employees or partners, have been acting in concert and as an enterprise, exploiting Apple’s confidential information to advance OpenAI’s efforts to enter the consumer hardware market. They have used confidential Apple information in approaching Apple’s trusted partners, even having one carry out a specific trade secret metal-finishing technique for OpenAI, misleading the partner to believe they had Apple’s permission to do so.

This is the tip of the iceberg. Apple lacks visibility into what’s been happening behind closed doors at OpenAI, where such misconduct is normalized and exemplified by leadership. This much is clear, however: 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. As a natural result, OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets.

Footnote 13 on p. 15 states:

Apple and OpenAI have a commercial relationship involving the integration of OpenAI’s ChatGPT into Apple Intelligence. The companies have entered into a written agreement governing that integration. That agreement is not at issue here. OpenAI’s acts of trade secret misappropriation alleged herein do not arise from and have no connection to that agreement.

Be that as it may legally speaking, in practical terms it seems untenable for that Apple Intelligence partnership to continue after this.

See also: Techmeme’s roundup.

★ Friday, 10 July 2026