Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI Inc., left, and Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc., during a dinner with technology leaders in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC, in the US, on Thursday, September 4, 2025. US President Donald Trump said he would be imposing a tax on semiconductor sales but there are small companies like Apple Inc. to improve their investment in the US. Photographer: Will Oliver/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Will Oliver | Bloomberg | Getty Images
an apple on Friday they sued OpenAI in federal court in Northern California, alleging trade secret theft, alleging that an artificial intelligence lab took the iPhone maker’s intellectual property to build its own consumer hardware.
“This much is clear, however: at all levels, from members of its technical staff to its chief hardware officer, and in collaboration with business partners, OpenAI has been stealing Apple’s trade secrets and confidential information,” the company said in an official filing.
A shocking reversal for the two companies, which entered into a high-profile partnership in 2024, when ChatGPT was integrated into the iPhone application. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman visited Apple headquarters to make the announcement.
But the relationship between the two companies has improved since OpenAI announced plans to enter the hardware industry last year, when it bought Apple designer Jony Ive’s startup, called IO Products, for $6.4 billion.
Apple’s updated version of its Siri assistant, coming out this fall, is supported GoogleGemini AI models instead of OpenAI technology.
Most of Apple’s allegations involve former employees who have interviewed or joined OpenAI.
Apple alleges that OpenAI hardware executive Tang Tan, a former Apple vice president, instructed Apple employees interviewing at OpenAI to share Apple secrets as part of the interview process. Tan was named as a defendant in the case.
“He instructed job seekers still working for Apple to bring ‘real parts’ from Apple to their interviews to ‘show and tell’ times when he and his team at OpenAI were unable to access other confidential Apple information,” Apple said in the filing.
Apple alleges that OpenAI trained employees who left Apple on how to bypass security procedures when they left the iPhone maker, and that Chang Liu, a former employee who joined OpenAI, stole an Apple laptop. Liu was named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
It also said that Apple believes that OpenAI is asking hardware firms to create a way to complete hardware that Apple invented, while “misleading our partner to believe that they have Apple’s permission to do so.”
“Recently, significant evidence has emerged suggesting that people employed by OpenAI have misappropriated Apple’s proprietary and confidential information about our unreleased technologies, processes and products,” an Apple representative told CNBC in a statement.
“We are not interested in the trade secrets of other companies. We are still focused on creating new technologies that empower people everywhere,” said a representative of OpenAI in a statement.
IO Products is also named in the lawsuit.
OpenAI hasn’t announced when or what its hardware products will be, but Altman said in November that it had finished its first prototypes.
Apple did not comment on whether the lawsuit would affect collaboration with OpenAI, including ChatGPT’s integration with Apple Intelligence.
The mounting legal difficulties present another risk to OpenAI as it prepares for what is expected to be a historic IPO.
Apple’s appeal comes two months after OpenAI won a high-profile lawsuit against Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. The judge found that Musk, who helped start OpenAI, waited too long to sue the AI lab over allegations that Altman, founder Greg Brockman and the company reneged on agreements to run it as a nonprofit. Musk said he would appeal the case.
Apple is seeking damages, injunctive relief, and an injunction to compel OpenAI to stop using its trade secrets.
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