Apple has sent legal preservation letters to roughly 40 former employees who now work at OpenAI, according to a Financial Times report, marking a significant escalation in the trade secret lawsuit Apple filed against the AI firm just last week.
The letters require recipients to retain documents, communications, and other potentially relevant materials.
Apple’s complaint makes its position clear: the current evidence represents only a fraction of the actual misconduct.
The tech giant believes that confidential hardware and product development secrets were funneled to OpenAI on a massive, systemic scale.
More Than 400 Former Apple Employees Now Work at OpenAI
Apple’s lawsuit points to a pattern rather than isolated incidents. More than 400 people who previously worked at Apple now hold positions at OpenAI, and Apple argues that number alone signals a coordinated effort to acquire insider knowledge about its hardware operations.
The preservation letters target a subset of that group, around 40 individuals, who Apple believes are most likely to hold relevant information.
Two figures sit at the center of Apple’s complaint. Tang Tan spent 24 years at Apple leading product design before joining OpenAI as Chief Hardware Officer.
Chang Liu worked as a senior system electrical engineer at Apple and is now on OpenAI’s hardware team.
Apple is suing both for breach of contract, alleging they violated employment agreements that restricted how they could use or share proprietary information after leaving the company.
What Apple Is Asking the Court to Do
Beyond damages, Apple is seeking a court injunction requiring OpenAI to stop using any Apple information in developing its AI hardware.
OpenAI is currently building consumer hardware, and Apple’s lawsuit is aimed directly at that project. The injunction, if granted, could halt or significantly delay OpenAI’s hardware ambitions while litigation proceeds.
OpenAI has pushed back firmly. In a statement to Bloomberg earlier this week, the company said it is not aware of any evidence that Apple’s complaint has merit.
That denial sets up what could become a lengthy legal dispute over how companies can use the expertise of engineers who move between competitors, and where that knowledge crosses into protected trade secret territory.
Apple’s approach with these preservation letters is a standard litigation strategy. By forcing former employees to retain records now, Apple ensures it can subpoena those materials later, even from individuals who are not named defendants.
The aggressive move also signals that Apple expects the case to expand significantly during the discovery phase.
