Apple is suing OpenAI and its chief hardware officer Tang Tan, alleging they stole trade secrets to develop competing devices, in a civil suit filed in the Northern District of California. Tan, a 24-year Apple veteran, and technical staffer Chang Liu, both former Apple employees, allegedly took confidential information, with the suit claiming Tan emailed himself Apple supplier details and had job candidates still at Apple bring ‘actual parts’ to OpenAI interviews. Liu is accused of using a former colleague’s work computer to reach Apple’s network and copy confidential hardware files, dozens of them, while coaching a recruit on avoiding the security team. Apple and OpenAI struck a 2024 deal to put ChatGPT in Siri, but ties have frayed, and Apple’s revamped Siri, announced in June, now runs on Google’s Gemini.
