Apple accuses OpenAI of destroying evidence in court filing

Apple is not just accusing OpenAI of poaching its talent. It’s now claiming the AI company is actively destroying evidence in the middle of a federal lawsuit, while alleging that a former Apple engineer named Chang Liu used a confidential Apple schematic in his work at OpenAI. How the lawsuit got here Apple filed the original suit on July 10, 2026, in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The case, numbered 5:26-cv-07078-EJD, targets OpenAI along with two former Apple employees: Chang Liu and Tang Yew Tan. Liu worked at Apple from 2018 until January 22, 2026, when he left to join OpenAI. Tan’s trajectory was even more conspicuous. He previously served as Apple’s VP of product design before becoming OpenAI’s chief hardware officer. Apple’s core allegation is trade secret misappropriation and breach of contract, centered on OpenAI’s push into consumer hardware. The company claims Liu retained an Apple laptop after his departure and, through a discovered authentication bug, accessed Apple’s internal systems and downloaded over 1,000 pages of confidential files. Apple says they included critical hardware engineering documents. Liu allegedly mocked Apple’s secur...