Key Points:
- Apple sent formal legal preservation letters to approximately 40 former employees who now work at rival AI startup OpenAI.
- The targeted workers represent about 10 percent of the estimated 400 former Apple employees who have joined OpenAI.
- The notices legally require recipients to preserve all relevant files, emails, and data amid an escalating trade secrets lawsuit.
- The dispute centers on claims that former Apple executives misappropriated confidential designs to help build OpenAI’s hardware devices.
The high-stakes legal battle between two of the world’s most powerful technology companies has escalated rapidly into a personal legal offensive. Apple has targeted dozens of OpenAI employees who previously worked at the iPhone maker, hitting them with formal legal warnings to preserve critical evidence. Approximately 40 former employees received these document-preservation letters, signaling that the consumer tech giant is digging much deeper to prove its allegations that the ChatGPT creator systematically stole proprietary trade secrets to jumpstart its own hardware ambitions.
These preservation letters are not individual lawsuits themselves, but they carry severe legal weight. The formal notices legally require recipients to preserve all potentially relevant documents, emails, files, personal communications, and data. This aggressive maneuver serves as a standard, pre-trial step in federal litigation to prevent the destruction, deletion, or alteration of digital evidence. By targeting these specific individuals, the iPhone maker is signaling its belief that the alleged misappropriation of intellectual property extends far beyond the executives named in its original court filings.
This legal offensive directly escalates a blockbuster, 41-page lawsuit filed recently in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The core complaint accuses the artificial intelligence pioneer of orchestrating a coordinated, highly aggressive campaign to poach key engineering talent and exploit confidential hardware plans, manufacturing processes, and unreleased product designs. The legal filing reveals a staggering statistic: more than 400 former Apple employees have joined the AI startup over the past few years, systematically draining the iPhone maker’s key product design teams.
The central figures named in the initial lawsuit include two former high-profile hardware executives who now lead the startup’s device engineering teams. Tang Tan, a 24-year veteran who served as Vice President of Product Hardware Engineering at Apple, joined the startup as its Chief Hardware Officer. The suit also names Chang Liu, a former senior system electrical engineer who joined the AI firm’s hardware team in January. The complaint alleges that Tan breached his employment contracts by actively soliciting and instructing current employees to bring proprietary designs, files, and physical components to their job interviews.
The legal filing describes highly detailed, systematic tactics used during the startup’s recruitment process. When interviewing prospective candidates who wanted to switch jobs, recruiters reportedly asked them to bring physical, unreleased proprietary components and computer-aided design (CAD) drawings to “show and tell” sessions. These parts allegedly included core hardware components such as batteries, main logic boards, and shielding parts. This allowed the startup’s hardware engineers to reverse-engineer Apple’s unreleased product architectures and establish relationships with its trusted manufacturing suppliers.
The complaint also alleges highly unauthorized digital intrusions executed by departing staff to gather corporate intelligence. Specifically, the hardware giant alleges that Chang Liu exploited a network authentication bug shortly after submitting his resignation. This security breach reportedly allowed him to bypass internal file restrictions and download highly sensitive engineering presentations outlining unreleased hardware plans. By downloading these files before moving his employment, the engineer allegedly handed the startup a pre-packaged blueprint of competitive hardware features.
The startup has firmly denied the trade secret theft allegations, but the growing legal friction comes as the company attempts to build a massive consumer hardware division. Last year, the startup acquired legendary former design chief Jony Ive’s hardware studio, io Products, for a staggering $6.5 billion. The unit is reportedly developing a series of consumer devices, including a movable, screenless smart speaker and a highly advanced AI smartphone designed to compete directly with the iPhone.
The aggressive legal maneuvers highlight a major shift in the tech industry, where human talent and institutional knowledge have emerged as the primary competitive differentiators. While hiring talent from competitors is a common and legally protected practice under California’s liberal labor laws, the systemic theft of unreleased designs crosses a clear legal boundary. The legal battle suggests that as artificial intelligence models transition from software clouds into physical, on-device consumer hardware, the battle to secure elite engineering talent has become an existential struggle for established hardware giants.
The massive, continuous loss of key employees has forced the iPhone maker into defensive hiring and retention strategies. The company has had to rebuild entire segments of its core product design teams after losing more than 400 engineers to the AI giant. To prevent further brain drain, the company has begun handing out historically high retention bonuses, while executive leadership has intervened personally to convince key engineers to stay. These internal concerns rank alongside global tariff exposures and memory chip shortages as the company’s primary corporate anxieties.
Ultimately, the decision to send formal preservation letters to dozens of former employees shows that the legal war over mobile AI hardware is entering a highly aggressive phase. By targeting 10 percent of the former workers who joined its competitor, the tech giant is attempting to freeze evidence and systematically uncover the full scope of the alleged trade secret theft. As both legal teams prepare for a prolonged courtroom battle in California, the outcome of this multi-billion-dollar litigation will determine which giant controls the physical hardware of the artificial intelligence era.
