On a quiet Monday afternoon in a federal courtroom, the story of Silicon Valley's most awkward friendship took another turn. Apple asked a judge to freeze OpenAI's hardware ambitions in place, arguing that former Apple employees now working at the AI giant are still leaking confidential information about unannounced products. The request for a preliminary injunction was no legal formality. It was Apple saying, in effect: stop what you are building until we figure out what you took.
The two companies once looked like the perfect couple. Apple put ChatGPT inside its devices, reportedly considered investing billions in OpenAI, and let the startup ride the iPhone's gravitational pull. Then came the hardware era, and everything curdled. OpenAI wanted to build devices of its own. Apple, according to the complaint filed last month, watched its own people walk out the door carrying its secrets.
A Friendship That Ended in a Filing
The original lawsuit read less like a legal dispute and more like a spy novel. Apple alleged that OpenAI systematically recruited its hardware engineers, and that some of them carried trade secrets across the aisle. The named players were Chang Liu, a senior systems engineer, and Tang Yew Tan, now OpenAI's chief hardware officer, along with Yu-Ting Peng, another OpenAI employee. The case also dragged in io, the device startup founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive, which OpenAI acquired.
But that first complaint was only the opening chapter. This week, Apple went further. It asked the court to block Liu, Tan, and OpenAI itself from accessing, using, or disclosing any of the alleged confidential information while the case plays out. Apple's lawyers argued that the company faces irreparable harm if the leaks continue, and they pushed for expedited discovery to find out how deep the problem actually goes.
Eleven More Names, and New Details
The most striking part of the new filing is a number: eleven. Apple said its continuing investigation has surfaced 11 other former employees who may have been witnesses, or worse, participants in the scheme. The original complaint named a handful of people. The updated version suggests the network around OpenAI's hardware team was much larger.
Apple's filing includes details that read like scenes from a corporate thriller:
- A former Apple employee allegedly met with Liu and Peng before Peng's interview at OpenAI, and the group discussed Apple proprietary information about unannounced products during that meeting.
- Another former employee allegedly took screenshots of confidential Apple documents relating to an unannounced product before sitting for an interview at OpenAI.
- After Apple filed its complaint, multiple former Apple employees now working at OpenAI reached out about returning Apple-issued work devices they had kept, which Apple suggested was a sign that more people were involved.
For a company that prides itself on secrecy, this is the nightmare scenario: the vault door was open, and the people walking through it knew exactly where the good stuff was kept.
OpenAI Fires Back: "We Do Not Have, Nor Want, Any of Their Trade Secrets"
OpenAI did not take the escalation quietly. In a public statement, the company called Apple's request for an injunction "both based on false information and completely unnecessary because we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets."
"We're much more interested in building innovative products and technologies that push the frontier," the company added.
Then OpenAI turned the mirror around. It pointed to Apple's own missteps, including an embarrassing moment where Apple emailed the wrong person after confusing two similar surnames, and suggested that the so-called residual access that let former employees into Apple's systems was really a security failure on Apple's side. Reports say OpenAI's response even described parts of the lawsuit as "careless" and, in a phrase that caught everyone's attention, "oddly personal."
There is something almost sad about the whole affair. These two companies were supposed to be partners in the AI era. Apple needed a chatbot, and OpenAI needed distribution. Instead, they are now in a fight where Apple's lawyers describe its departed employees as the risk, and OpenAI's lawyers describe Apple as a spurned partner lashing out.
What happens next depends on the judge. If the preliminary injunction is granted, OpenAI would have to wall off whatever it learned from Apple while the case proceeds, a practical nightmare for a company racing to ship hardware. If it is denied, Apple keeps fighting with discovery requests and the threat of more names surfacing.
Either way, the message to every engineer in Silicon Valley is now clear: when you leave one tech giant for another, the trail you leave behind can end up in a courtroom. And in this particular drama, the opening arguments have barely begun.
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