Apple sues OpenAI, and the io deal is the crime scene
Apple's trade secret suit names OpenAI's hardware chief and claims candidates were told to bring actual Apple parts to job interviews. The AI phone might be built on Cupertino's homework.
Apple sued OpenAI on July 10 in the Northern District of California, alleging trade secret theft it calls “the tip of the iceberg.” The suit also names io Products and two ex-Apple people: Tang Tan, the former VP of product design for iPhone and Apple Watch who now runs OpenAI’s hardware effort, and engineer Chang Liu. The claims are not subtle. Apple says Tan had job candidates bring “actual parts” from Apple to interviews for show and tell and quizzed them using internal project codenames, and that Liu exploited a security hole to pull over 1,000 pages of manufacturing files after leaving, kept his Apple laptop, and joked about it in messages.
This is the bill for the $6.5 billion io acquisition coming due. OpenAI bought Jony Ive’s hardware startup, hired more than 400 former Apple employees, and is building a phone rumored for 2028. Apple says it flagged all this to OpenAI in February 2025 and got silence. OpenAI’s response this week: “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets.”
Poaching talent is legal and Apple knows it; that is how Apple built half its own teams. The lawsuit lives or dies on the documents, and Apple apparently has receipts with “LOL” in them. If the most anticipated AI device of the decade needs smuggled circuit boards to exist, the discovery phase is going to be a better read than the keynote.