OpenAI publicly rebuts Apple's trade-secret lawsuit, releases internal correspondence

OpenAI on August 3, 2026 published a blog post titled "Apple is getting this wrong," mounting a detailed public rebuttal of Apple's trade-secret lawsuit and releasing internal emails and messages it says undercut Apple's account. The post responds directly to Apple's July 10, 2026 complaint, which accused OpenAI of misappropriating confidential Apple hardware information through two former Apple employees, and it specifically targets Apple's pending request for a preliminary injunction.

What's new

OpenAI disputes several of Apple's central claims. On Apple's assertion that it reached out to OpenAI in February 2026 and received no response, OpenAI says Apple's own outside lawyers sent the email to the wrong person after confusing two Asian last names, and only corrected course after OpenAI flagged the mistake. OpenAI also says Apple claimed to have discussed the matter with OpenAI's General Counsel, a conversation Apple has since "conceded never happened," and that Apple failed to disclose it had told OpenAI at the time it was "resolving any issues" before going quiet for five months and then suing.

On the specific allegations, OpenAI says Apple now admits that Apple employees themselves reached out to former engineer Chang Liu after he left the company and asked for his help locating information, undercutting the claim that Liu improperly accessed Apple systems on his own initiative. OpenAI attributes any lingering access to what it describes as Apple's own pattern of failing to revoke system access for departing employees. On claims against Tang Tan, OpenAI's chief hardware officer and a 24-year Apple veteran who led iPhone and Apple Watch hardware, OpenAI says Tan has been explicit internally that the company must not use confidential information from other companies.

Directly addressing the injunction request, OpenAI states in the post: "Apple's request for a preliminary injunction is 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."

Context

Apple filed suit against OpenAI on July 10, 2026, alleging trade-secret theft tied to OpenAI's push into consumer AI hardware, naming Tang Tan and Chang Liu as central to the alleged misappropriation. That complaint set up one of the more pointed legal confrontations between a legacy hardware giant and a leading AI lab, arriving as OpenAI has been public about its ambitions to ship its own hardware devices. OpenAI's response goes further than a routine court filing, publishing what it says are the underlying emails and messages for the public to review directly rather than leaving the dispute confined to sealed or paraphrased court documents.

Why it matters

The dispute sits at the intersection of two of the industry's biggest current fault lines: the talent war between incumbent hardware companies and AI labs, and the legal exposure that comes with poaching senior engineering leadership. A preliminary injunction, if granted, could constrain OpenAI's hardware development timeline or personnel decisions before the underlying trade-secret claims are even resolved on the merits — which is why OpenAI is contesting it so publicly rather than waiting for the normal litigation process to play out. By publishing primary correspondence itself, OpenAI is also making a bet that public opinion, not just the court record, will shape how the case is perceived, a tactic that raises the stakes for Apple's own public communications strategy going forward.