Some pretty damning stuff:<p>> OpenAI also instructs new hires on how to avoid scrutiny when they leave Apple. For example, Mr. Tan warns them not to tell Apple that they have taken jobs at OpenAI, so they can stay at Apple as long as they can.<p>> Apple says it discovered a pattern of OpenAI recruits emailing themselves confidential information when leaving Apple, including Tan.<p>> OpenAI apparently used confidential Apple hardware information when approaching Apple suppliers, and tricked one company into using a "specific trade secret metal-finishing technique" for an OpenAI device by claiming it had Apple's permission to do so.<p>> Liu allegedly kept an Apple-issued laptop after departing the company and exploited a vulnerability to download dozens of confidential Apple documents while he was working at OpenAI.<p>Non-competes and the like are gross but what's described here isn't just "bring your expertise to OpenAI" it's "here is how to steal secrets on your way out" which is even grosser.
Every single time.<p>If someone calls himself open, you should know who it is and what to expect.
This isn’t the first time something like this happens and I always wonder how are these seemingly smart people earning good money so dumb.
Right? Just straight up documentation with no shame: From an Axios article on this<p>> Liu celebrated the exploit, according to the filing. "LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage], so funny," he said in a message to a former colleague who was still employed by Apple.<p><a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/07/10/apple-sues-openai-trade-secret-theft" rel="nofollow">https://www.axios.com/2026/07/10/apple-sues-openai-trade-sec...</a>
I’ve been present when the world comes crashing down around people who thought they were too smart to get caught.<p>The surprise in their eyes is always very genuine.
Intelligence is domain-specific.
It’s even more ridiculous when choosing to do it Apple. It’s hard to think of a company with more legal resources and which is more protective of its hardware IP.
Overconfidence. These people think they are much smarter than others to be caught.
Google/Waymo + Uber/Otto comes to mind here with Anthony Levandowski.
More like lot of people are leaving Apple for OpenAI (no surprise) and an Apple manager wants to send a signal to everyone leaving to chill with what they walk out with. Corps have to perform a lot of theatre because there is lot of info constantly leaking out.
seemingly smart is the key here. intelligence doesnt make up for ethics.
And I'd question the intelligence also. I don't think employment at FAANG means a lot in that regard.
Yeah but it isn't just unethical, it's also deeply stupid -- you <i>will</i> be caught.
INT 18 WIS 3 is a terribly dangerous build in this world.
Those people are designers. And they don't necessarily understand software, data, or security. When I explained to my non-technical friends about how they were being tracked by website cookies, it sounded like a sci fi story to them. But yes, it's dumb.<p>I was more surprised by how they managed to keep using work devices after termination. This sounds to me like a failure of their manager to do their job to follow the standard exit process.
Because companies get an advantage by having their people do this. You only hear about the times they get caught, but apparently they get caught so rarely that it's worth it.
Everywhere I've ever worked, if I went to management and said "hey, I've got some files from my last job, if you want to see them," they would say "absolutely not, please get rid of them RIGHT NOW," and probably fire me.<p>But, I don't work in Silicon Valley.
"Picasso had a saying -- 'good artists copy; great artists steal' -- and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."<p>- Steve Jobs
Generally speaking, companies retaining a competitive advantage with each other is good for their investors but bad for the public. It's usually to the public's benefit for employees to share knowledge, it makes goods and services cheaper and more available.
As a counterpoint, why should a “metal finishing technique” be proprietary? Lying to the vendor that Apple said it’s ok is obviously wrong, but an employee taking that knowledge in their head doesn’t seem wrong to me. We have moved past the age of indentured apprentices and the freemasons.
Because Apple paid to produce that knowledge? It's good that people can spend a lot of time and money developing new knowledge and then for some period of time they get to exclusively reap the rewards of doing so.<p>Do you mind if I MITM all of your work output, your emails, your code, your messages, and attach my name to it and then receive your paychecks in exchange for my work?
My reading is that the employee did not know the method but only of its existence.
It must have some sort of value if OpenAI went through the trouble to get access to it.
Culture issue. From <i>How to Apply to Y Combinator</i>[1] by Paul Graham:<p>"Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage."<p>> we’re not looking for the sort of obedient, middle-of-the-road people that big companies tend to hire. We’re looking for people who like to beat the system.<p>1: <a href="https://www.ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html">https://www.ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html</a>
Apple kindly wanted to make OpenAI add in some legal liabilities to their IPO filling.<p>Discovery is going to be great fun (for Apple).
This is a really bad look for a company that has vast quantities of our IP stored on its servers.
OpenAI is about to get ROCKED on this. From this report, this looks open and shut. Apple has basically infinite money and incredible lawyers. Not sure what OpenAI can counter with unless they have clear, hard evidence this hasn’t been happening.
OpenAI also has infinite money, and the graph of money/lawyering gets clamped well below what OpenAI can afford. It's going to end most other corporate courtroom tangles: with a settlement and a well-publicized partnership.
For real. If Apple can prove half of this complaint, OpenAI need to be jumping straight to "how can we settle this <i>immediately.</i>" Can you imagine how much fun Apple lawyers would have taking this to a jury trial? Especially considering overall Apple knows that the public overall vaguely likes Apple and distrusts "AI" companies for, hmmm... (alleged) IP theft.<p>I'm also wondering about all these involved ex-Apple people who decided to pivot to crime, it seems like OpenAI has to fire all of them, no? Because how do you just keep them, knowing that they're all basically tainted, and that Apple will be coming back to sue you again for anything that seems "inspired" by Apple products or tech.<p>What a massive cock-up for whoever (Tan?) is at the top of this conspiracy, to think this was worth the risk, and to have not known that the chances of getting caught going this far outside the legal boundaries were less than 100%.
Is there any other AI company with as much controversy as this company?<p>- ~murdered~ (dead) employee who's mother is on a anti-sam hate campaign
- ceo fired then coup's his way back into the company
- conflict of interest with Microsoft<p>Despite Anthropic's bad press, they haven't been as dishonest as this company.
A company that behaves like this in one area, cannot be trusted in any area. Any enterprise that endorses/allows OpenAI products to be used is taking a big risk.
I’m not one to defend huge companies, but OpenAI is a huge company.<p>It’s possible this kind of behavior is endorsed throughout, or it’s possible it’s limited to this specific group.<p>We know nothing beyond what Apple has alleged.
I’ve been at companies where just one group - or even just one person - did something unconscionable and kept getting away with it until the story hit the headlines. And I can tell you, it was never just an isolated incident involving just that group. It’s also all the people who knew something was up and didn’t say anything. And it’s the corporate leadership fostering a pervasive culture of turning a blind eye to ethical problems. Often by allowing people in power to ensure that sounding the alarm is a career-limiting move.
You think the group tasked with developing whatever hardware device they're trying to build is isolated away from senior leadership and is running rogue?
Not being able to prove is one thing, pretending it may not be the case is next level of positivity. There are definitely going to be pockets of hard working smart folks in every place, however the company as a whole would get a bad name even if few folks are indulged and the company is not doing anything about it.
Are you joking or are you confusing huge valuations with huge headcount?
Do you know who the CEO is?
Meh. Consider that you had no choice and no say that your data out there, both present and historic as mined, aggregated and analyzed by data collectors, was used as a training set for the LLMs. I think you’re a tad too late with your warning. They’re already thieves and they know it. And they know you can’t and won’t do anything about it.
You can trust Apple. I mean they openly lied to a judge last year under oath, but you can trust them.
I'm the farthest thing from an Apple fanboi you can find, but Apple's not so unethical as to make all this (OpenAI trade secret) stuff up. The OpenAI settlement they'll no doubt get from this won't amount to 30 days of their App Store rent-seeking that they were propping up with those lies.<p>If they can't prove any of this stuff they wouldn't file the suit. No matter what you or I think of Apple, the chances that this went down at least as criminally as they allege, are very high.
Can you provide a source? Otherwise your comment is useless.
Judge's ruling.<p>> To hide the truth, Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, outright lied under oath. Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise. Cook chose poorly. The real evidence, detailed herein, more than meets the clear and convincing standard to find a violation. The Court refers the matter to the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate.<p>> [..]<p>> Neither Apple, nor its counsel, corrected the, now obvious, lies. They did not seek to withdraw the testimony or to have it stricken (although Apple did request that the Court strike other testimony). Thus, Apple will be held to have adopted the lies and misrepresentations to this Court.<p><a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.364265/gov.uscourts.cand.364265.1508.0_3.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...</a>
> A company that behaves like this in one area, cannot be trusted in any area.<p>A company locking down their phone platform cannot be trusted with their laptop OS.
Altman showing how desperate he is to get into hardware. He knows local models that supplement models in chip are the end of OIA
It's ok because this information was just being used to train their models.
Mr Tan is suddenly going to be in a LOT of trouble
Can't wait for the inevitable bailout and US tax dollars to pay for this!
Copy of the Complaint.<p><a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.474095/gov.uscourts.cand.474095.1.0.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.47...</a><p><i>9. In the months before he left Apple, Mr. Tan met with OpenAI or its collaborators and
discussed meetings with a key Apple supplier. He began emailing himself information about Apple’s
suppliers and internal summaries of the consumer electronics industry. And today, when interviewing
Apple employees for jobs at OpenAI, Mr. Tan uses Apple’s confidential information to gain access
to even more insider knowledge. He has used an Apple internal project codename to ask, “What’s the
plan[?]” for an unannounced Apple product. He has directed job candidates still working for Apple
to bring “Actual parts” from Apple to their interviews for “show and tell” sessions in which he and
his team at OpenAI can elicit still more Apple confidential information. These directions to bring
Apple’s parts to OpenAI job interviews surprised at least one of the candidates, who commented that
he “didn’t even know we could take those from the office.”<p>10. This is part of OpenAI’s strategy to extract Apple’s confidential information. OpenAI
has been instructing Apple employees to bring “CAD/design artifacts” and “prototypes” to their
interviews and to divulge details about their work such as “subsystem and component selection,” the
“tools or methodologies you use for system integration, such as CAD software, simulation tools,”
and “Vendor selection and communication/collaboration with vendors.”<p>11. OpenAI also instructs new hires on how to avoid scrutiny when they leave Apple. For
example, Mr. Tan warns them not to tell Apple that they have taken jobs at OpenAI, so they can stay
at Apple as long as they can. After his own departure, Mr. Tan improperly retained or obtained an
internal Apple managers’ document marked “Need to Know” that describes security procedures for
employee departures. Messages left on Apple-issued work devices show that Mr. Tan and his OpenAI
colleagues have been sharing this document with new hires before they give notice to Apple of their
departures, previewing Apple’s security protocols. Unsurprisingly, Apple’s investigation has found
a pattern by employees who depart for OpenAI of taking steps to evade the security processes intended
to protect Apple’s confidential information.</i>
Super stupid actions by these ex-employees LMAO<p>These people think OpenAI can/will protect them?
This season of Silicon Valley is getting spicy
This is going to be interesting.<p>Only because both companies have access to billions and infinite lawyers.
Apples billions are in cash<p>OpenAIs billions are in IOUs to Nvidia
OpenAI has concepts of money.
Only one has Actual Money™ and quite a lot it.
Lawyers: <i>rubbing hands together</i>
Imagine comparing what apple has access to vs a deeply money losing firm
More importantly Apple can effectively bring up the shadow of this lawsuit whenever OpenAi tries to acquire money.<p>They can make legal fillings and calls to Bloomberg to keep the story going as long as they want to and suck some oxygen out of any IPO ramp up.
The “nuclear bomb vs coughing baby” meme comes to mind.
probably the real reason why Apple opted Gemini over ChatGPT
Weirdly, this seems like they're trying to train a model to work like Apple? They seem really interested in processes and how stuff is done, rather than only the finished artifacts.
Given that allegedly hardware information was involved I’d lean more toward this is for developing either custom silicon based on Apple’s designs or OpenAI wants to make consumer hardware. Aren’t they making something with Jony Ive too?
A lot of people have tried to copy Apple’s finished product and they never get it right, because they don’t have the process behind it. How something looks is only a small part of it.
That doesn't seem that weird to me. Good processes lead to good artifacts.
> According to a report by The New Yorker, Swartz described Altman as a "sociopath" who "can never be trusted" and "would do anything<p>Who is surprised by this development?
[dead]
Some more: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48865019">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48865019</a>
[flagged]
They didn't still the property, that would be illegal. They trained a model on it. That's totally ok.
>In its lawsuit Friday, Apple accused Tang Tan, OpenAI’s chief hardware officer and a former Apple executive, of coaching his hires from Apple on how to evade Apple’s security processes for departing employees.<p>The word "coaching" is very malleable, and could refer to perfectly legal conduct, or conduct that is illegal, unethical, or both. How would an OpenAI employee know what Apple's security processes for departing employees are? One would assume he was told by previously-departed Apple employees. Would they have been forbidden to disclose information about the outgoing process? I would think so, given how careful Apple is about these things.<p>> Apple accused another former employee, Chang Liu, of using a former colleague’s Apple-owned laptop to access and download technical documents while working at OpenAI. Mr. Liu told that Apple employee what information about unannounced products she should study before job interviews, Apple said.<p>I would be very hesitant to assist a former colleague who is still at Apple in this way. Apple is well known for using deliberate leaks to smoke out leakers, and it would be easy for them to get a current/loyal employee to go through the interview process at a competitor for the purpose of finding out if the competitor is trying to get Apple employees to act unethically/illegally.<p>EDIT: I see my comment, which I posted on the HN thread for an NYT article, has been merged into the comment section of a different article, and is now being downvoted a bunch. Please understand I did not post this comment here, so if it seems out of place that's why.
> How would an OpenAI employee know what Apple's security processes for departing employees are?<p>The openAI employee in question is also a former Apple employee.
Not just any employee. A 24 year veteran and at the time of departure the VP of design for the iPhone and Apple Watch
Ah, somehow I missed that even though it was included in the quote I copied. Thanks!
> <i>After his own departure, Mr. Tan improperly retained or obtained an internal Apple managers’ document marked “Need to Know” that describes security procedures for employee departures. Messages left on Apple-issued work devices show that Mr. Tan and his OpenAI colleagues have been sharing this document with new hires before they give notice to Apple of their departures, previewing Apple’s security protocols.</i><p><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28453229-apple-v-openai/" rel="nofollow">https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28453229-apple-v-ope...</a><p>Lawsuits like this tend to be surprisingly easy to read, partly because they intend for the public/journalists to read them.
> How would an OpenAI employee know what Apple's security processes for departing employees are?<p>Either by being a former Apple employee, or polling former Apple employees.
Reminds me of Apple suing Samsung. Why bother with the free market when you can just sue your competitors?
Reminds me of Apple suing Samsung. Why bother with the free market when you can just sue your competitors?
Some of the Apple/Samsung complaint was horseshit (and was a bit of a distraction because they knew they'd need to settle their suit with Nokia).<p>But it was design copying and IP infringement stuff: duplication of things already in the wild.<p>This is on another level. If <i>any</i> of this is true, it's extraordinary, and I think OpenAI will likely want to settle quickly, thus increasing Apple's AI-related earnings.
According to Apple, are there any tech companies in the galaxy who haven't stolen their trade secrets?