Author: Hu Lin Dance King

The "Santa Clara Pizza Hut" has finally officially struck.

On July 10 local time, Apple Inc. formally filed a lawsuit, accusing OpenAI of stealing company secrets by recruiting former Apple employees.

According to the lawsuit information, a former senior electrical engineer at Apple named Chang Liu discovered after leaving that he could still access Apple's cloud file storage. The reason is that he retained the company-issued laptop when he left, and there was a vulnerability in Apple's system that allowed him to continue reading internal files after his departure.

In the lawsuit documents, Apple specifically named OpenAI's Chief Hardware Officer Tang Tan, accusing these actions of being directly guided by the senior leadership of OpenAI.

Apple wrote in the lawsuit, "This is just the tip of the iceberg; these misconducts have become the norm there, demonstrated by the leadership."

If this statement is accurate, then it's not just a personal mistake by a former employee, but a systematic intelligence acquisition mechanism.

Tang Tan was originally a key figure at Apple, long responsible for hardware development of the Apple Watch and wearable devices. He joined OpenAI as the "Chief Hardware Officer" — a position that basically did not exist at OpenAI a year ago.

This indicates that OpenAI's establishment of a hardware department is not a spur-of-the-moment decision; they are seriously building a team.

Apple also mentioned in the lawsuit that currently more than 400 former Apple employees are now working at OpenAI. This is not ordinary recruitment; this is OpenAI's systematic targeted assault on Apple's hardware team!

01 Failed Cooperation

To understand today's lawsuit, we must go back to that handshake in 2024.

That year Apple announced a partnership with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into iOS. The launch event was presented very nicely, with Cook and Altman each saying things that sounded like mutual admiration.

But the friction behind the cooperation has always been there.

Apple was worried that OpenAI's privacy standards were not strict enough, and was hesitant to hand over user data to a third party they couldn't control. OpenAI, on the other hand, grew increasingly frustrated, feeling that Apple had buried the entry point of ChatGPT too deep, making it nearly inaccessible to ordinary users, and the revenue sharing agreed upon by both parties was far from reaching expectations.

A description from an OpenAI executive illustrates the situation at that time well: "They basically said, OpenAI needs to take a leap of faith and trust us, but the results were poor."

A leap of faith. In business cooperation, this phrase is usually the last step before a collapse.

By May of this year, Bloomberg had already reported that OpenAI was considering suing Apple for breach of contract. Which company would strike first was just a matter of time.

In the end, Apple struck first.

02 OpenAI's Unspoken Words

In the past two weeks, if you only looked at OpenAI's product moves, it would be easy to think that the company is in some kind of excited state.

On July 9, they released the flagship model GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, emphasizing stronger frontier reasoning and long-term agent capabilities. On the same day, they launched the GPT-Live-1 full-duplex voice model, claiming to make conversations with AI feel more natural. Just days ago, there were reports about negotiations to transfer 5% equity to the US government — valuing this equity at approximately 42.6 billion yuan based on an valuation of 852 billion dollars.

With dense product launches, raised valuations, and frequent movements, this is the rhythm of a company preparing for an IPO.

Then, Apple's lawsuit arrived.

CNBC's analysis put it directly: This lawsuit adds another risk factor to OpenAI's already anticipated historic IPO. Two months ago, OpenAI had just won a high-profile lawsuit against Elon Musk. Now, it has to face another opponent of a completely different scale in court.

Apple's accumulation in hardware and supply chain is something that OpenAI's hardware team will take many years to approach. The timing of this lawsuit coincides with the most vulnerable stage of OpenAI's hardware business.

Apple also pointed out in the lawsuit that "OpenAI's emerging hardware business is now based on the most vulnerable foundation, corroded by its illegal dependence on the misappropriated business secrets."

03 No One Wants to Miss the AI iPhone

To be honest, there has never been anything "clean" behind the talent flow in Silicon Valley.

When engineers carry memories of former employer architecture, knowledge of unreleased products, and understanding of internal team decision-making paths to switch to competitors — this happens every day. Most of the time, everyone chooses to look the other way.

But this time, the situation is a bit different.

Tang Tan is not an ordinary engineer; he is one of the heads of Apple's core hardware line. The laptop in Chang Liu's case is more like a metaphor — someone not only took memories but also kept a key for continued access.

If Apple's lawsuit holds, it establishes not just this case but sends a signal: AI companies, in building hardware teams, may face legal consequences for systematically poaching core intellectual property from competitors.

The deterrent value for the entire industry could far exceed the final compensation amount.

Industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo previously analyzed that the device OpenAI is developing may be a smartphone reliant on AI agents rather than traditional apps. If this direction is accurate, the competition between OpenAI and Apple is not about one AI company trying to seize market share from a traditional tech company, but directly aimed at the core logic of the iPhone.

Ultimately, the two companies are bound to confront each other directly — this is probably an outcome everyone already knew. It’s just unexpected that it started with a laptop that was not returned.

Sometimes, the catalyst of a grand drama is just such an ordinary matter.

Later this year, Apple will also launch a redesigned Siri that supports cross-app work and uses local data from users' iPhones to provide personalized answers. OpenAI's new model has just been updated, and the hardware team is still being built, while legal obstacles continue to arise on the road to IPO.

The courtroom battle may be the easiest part of the war between Apple and OpenAI.