OpenAI Accuses Apple Hire of Taking 100+ Files on Its Secret Device
October 14, 2026
For three months, Apple has had exactly one story to tell about OpenAI: that the ChatGPT company systematically stripped its hardware secrets, poached its engineers, and is building a device on stolen foundations. On Wednesday, OpenAI finally told a second story — and it's Apple's.
A new filing by OpenAI in the lawsuit between the two companies alleges that an OpenAI employee who left for Apple sent more than 100 files about an unreleased product to a personal account, then walked into Apple and gave a presentation about that very product to senior Apple leadership. That is not a denial. It is an accusation in the opposite direction, and it turns this case from a one-sided heist narrative into something much uglier: both sides pointing at each other, holding their own evidence.
Reuters broke the news of the filing this afternoon. Everything else about it — the employee's name, the dates, what's actually in those files — remains sealed inside court papers the public hasn't seen. What we can say, and what matters, is this: OpenAI has stopped playing defence.
What OpenAI's filing actually says
According to the Reuters report on the filing, the former OpenAI employee did two things: first, forwarded over 100 files concerning an unreleased product to a personal account; second, later delivered a presentation about that unreleased product to senior leadership at Apple. The sequencing does the heavy lifting: this isn't "someone took files on the way out and Apple happened to benefit." OpenAI is alleging a deliberate pipeline — files out, then a briefing to Apple's top brass about the thing those files describe.
The filing does not identify the employee by name in the reporting we've seen — and that single missing name is the whole story right now. Is this a senior hardware person with real access to the io device programme, or a mid-level engineer with an exit-interview grudge? The filing, as reported, doesn't say, and OpenAI isn't talking beyond the paper.
We checked the accessible coverage this hour — Reuters plus the secondary write-ups of the case — and no outlet has named the employee or the product. Anyone who tells you they know what those 100 files contain is guessing. The filing is the sole source for the claim, and allegations in filings are, until tested, exactly that.
Three months of accusations — then the mirror flipped
To feel the weight of this counter-punch, you need the last three months of the case. Apple sued OpenAI on July 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, naming the company, its hardware unit io Products, chief hardware officer Tang Yew Tan, and engineer Chang Liu. The charge: a systematic campaign to extract Apple's confidential hardware information to accelerate OpenAI's entry into consumer devices.
Apple's allegations are specific and, if true, damning. It says Liu — a senior system electrical engineer who left Apple in January — kept an Apple-issued laptop and exploited an authentication bug to pull dozens of confidential hardware files off Apple's network after he was gone, including one collection running past 1,000 pages. It says Tan, the 24-year Apple veteran who led iPhone and Apple Watch design before co-founding io in 2024, told Apple candidates to bring physical components to OpenAI interviews for "show-and-tell" sessions. It says OpenAI even approached one of Apple's manufacturing partners about a proprietary metal-finishing technique, implying Apple had blessed it.
OpenAI's public response has been equal parts defiance and mockery. An OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC the company has "no interest in other companies' trade secrets" and remains "focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere." And in August the company issued a statement that must have stung in Cupertino: "Apple is one of the greatest companies of all time, and built a reputation for obsessing over the smallest details. This careless, aggressive and oddly personal lawsuit sadly doesn't live up to that reputation."
Behind the rhetoric, OpenAI's legal position has been consistent: Apple can't name a specific trade secret that was actually stolen, only broad categories of hardware know-how — and Apple's real problem is its own sloppy offboarding, including encouraging employees to mix work into personal iCloud accounts. In August, OpenAI published excerpts of private messages between Liu and former Apple colleagues on its own website, arguing they showed Apple staff kept calling Liu with technical questions after he left.
Still, until today, OpenAI was fighting Apple's story. The new filing is the first time it has offered its own version of the villain. As we reported this week, OpenAI has had a rough October on the insider-threat front. The company clearly decided that being the victim of employee misconduct plays better than being accused of it.
Yesterday's ruling set the stage
On Tuesday, Davila partially granted Apple's request for expedited discovery: OpenAI must hand over forensic images of certain devices, its interview checklists and scripts for former Apple hires, and private LINE messages between Liu and fellow ex-Apple engineer Yu-Ting "Alyssa" Peng — and all three, plus Tan, face depositions within 30 days.
Davila's reasoning was blunt. He agreed with Apple that "the trade secrets are so deeply intertwined with OpenAI's hardware products and R&D activities that the risk of irreparable harm is significant." That is the kind of sentence that makes a defendant's lawyers reach for the antacids.
But the judge also drew a line: no expedited access to OpenAI's actual R&D on metal finishes, power management and batteries, and a demand that Apple finally define what it means by "Apple Originated Information" instead of waving a vague phrase at the court. And the hearing scheduled for Wednesday — the big showdown over Apple's preliminary injunction — was vacated as "suitable for disposition without oral argument," as we covered in detail.
Seen in that light, OpenAI's new filing looks less like a coincidence and more like a chess move. Apple just won early access to OpenAI's hiring files and private messages; OpenAI responds by telling the court that the information flow has a lane going the other way — and that Apple's own senior leadership sat through a briefing on OpenAI's unreleased product. If Davila is weighing who deserves expedited access to whose files, OpenAI has just handed him a reason to weigh both sides.
The unreleased product at the centre of it all
What product could 100+ files possibly describe? OpenAI has never confirmed a device, but the context is impossible to ignore. The company absorbed Jony Ive's hardware startup io last year in a reported all-equity deal worth around $6.5 billion, installed ex-Apple design chief Tang Yew Tan as chief hardware officer, and says in court filings it is building "a new family of AI-era devices" for which it has "no need or desire for Apple's trade secrets."
Bloomberg has reported that the first product is a doughnut-shaped smart speaker priced above $300, aimed at 2027 — and the defendants' own court papers say no device will ship earlier than the end of February 2027. Nobody at OpenAI will confirm any of this on the record, and the filing as reported doesn't tie the 100 files to io or any specific device.
And that is precisely why this allegation, even unproven, is so explosive. Apple has spent the case arguing that OpenAI is building its hardware future on Apple's past. OpenAI is now arguing that Apple wanted a look at OpenAI's future badly enough to sit through a presentation about it. Only one of those stories can be the whole truth. Quite possibly, neither is.
Our take: this is the hinge of the whole case
Let's be honest about what just happened. For three months this was a one-way prosecution: Apple the victim, OpenAI the raider, with Davila steadily — if partially — siding with Apple's urgency. OpenAI's options were to keep denying, to settle quietly, or to do exactly what it did today: allege that the conduct Apple is suing over is conduct Apple also benefits from. It's the oldest move in litigation and one of the most effective, because it doesn't require OpenAI to prove Apple stole anything. It only requires the judge to doubt that Apple is a clean-handed plaintiff.
That said, an allegation is not evidence, and OpenAI's filing will now get the same treatment Apple's claims have endured for three months: forensic scrutiny, depositions, and a judge who has already shown he won't take either side's word for it. The shrewdest reading is that OpenAI doesn't need the 100-file claim to be proven today — it needs it to be plausible enough that Davila hesitates before handing Apple any more of its secrets. On that measure, the filing has probably already done its job.
According to this filing, a room of Apple's senior leaders sat through a presentation about a competitor's unreleased product — delivered by the competitor's own former employee. Whether that was a stunning intelligence coup or a routine hire briefing that OpenAI is now dressing up as theft is the question the depositions must answer. Liu, Peng and Tan are all due under oath within 30 days. Add an unnamed ex-OpenAI employee to that list, and the next month of this case is going to be extraordinary.
What happens next
Apple hasn't responded publicly to the new filing yet — and given the pace of this docket, a response brief is likely days away, not weeks. The immediate calendar is already crowded: OpenAI owes Apple the already-collected interview and device materials within five days of Tuesday's order, the rest within fourteen, and the depositions of Liu, Peng and Tan must happen within 30 days.
The bigger question is whether Davila reopens any of Tuesday's discovery decisions in light of OpenAI's claim. If the judge now believes Apple may be sitting on OpenAI's confidential information — gathered through that leadership presentation — the expedited-discovery asymmetry Apple just won could start to look one-sided. Don't be surprised if OpenAI's next move is to ask for the same early access to Apple's files that Apple just got to its own.
We'll be watching the docket. This case has gone from a trade-secrets complaint to a credibility war — and as Australia's summons of Altman and Amodei showed, OpenAI's leadership is learning that lesson on more than one front this month.
Sources
Reuters (the new filing); Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg News; Economic Times; eWeek; AppleInsider; Yonhap News via Aju Press; and TechPulse USA's own Oct 13 discovery-ruling coverage.
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