OpenAI told Bloomberg this week that it has no evidence supporting Apple’s trade secret lawsuit.
The denial came just four days after Apple sued the AI giant, accusing two former employees of orchestrating a coordinated effort to steal confidential hardware information.
“While we take these allegations seriously, we’re not aware of any evidence that this complaint has merit,” OpenAI said in its statement. “We believe in fair competition and allowing people the freedom to work wherever they choose.”
What Apple Actually Alleges
Apple’s lawsuit centers on two people: Tang Tan, now OpenAI’s Chief Hardware Officer, and Chang Liu, a member of OpenAI’s hardware team.
Both previously worked at Apple. Tan spent 24 years at Apple leading product design. Liu worked as a senior systems electrical engineer before moving to OpenAI.
According to Apple’s complaint, Tan and Liu asked Apple employees who were interviewing for jobs at OpenAI to arrive with specific information about unreleased devices, internal components, manufacturing processes, and supplier relationships.
Liu is separately accused of holding on to an Apple-issued laptop after leaving the company and of using an authentication bug to access confidential documents while already employed at OpenAI.
How Apple Frames the Scope
Apple did not treat these two individuals as isolated bad actors. The lawsuit describes their conduct as representative of a broader culture at OpenAI, with Apple claiming the misconduct extends from entry-level technical staff to the company’s hardware leadership.
Apple also noted that more than 400 of its former employees now work at OpenAI, a figure the company cited as context for the scale of the alleged information flow.
OpenAI’s second public statement, which mentions employee mobility and the freedom to work wherever people choose, appears aimed at framing the dispute as a hiring rivalry rather than a theft case.
Its first response last Friday was shorter: “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets,” spokesperson Drew Pusateri said at the time.
What Apple Is Asking the Court to Do
Apple has requested a jury trial and is seeking an injunction requiring OpenAI to stop using any Apple information in developing its AI hardware.
The company is also pursuing financial damages and has filed breach-of-contract claims against both Tan and Liu individually, arguing that they violated the employment agreements they signed while at Apple.
Apple acknowledged in the filing that its current visibility into OpenAI’s internal operations is limited, and said it expects the discovery process to surface additional evidence.
The lawsuit describes OpenAI’s hardware business as built on information it was never entitled to have.
