The lawsuit names both the startup and OpenAI’s chief hardware officer, Tang Yew Tan, who formerly served as a vice-president at Apple.
“OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets,” Apple wrote in the complaint.
Apple claims that Tan shared information about corporate suppliers and pressured job candidates to hand over sensitive materials during recruitment interviews.
“He has directed job candidates still working for Apple to bring ‘actual parts’ from Apple to their interviews for ‘show and tell’ sessions,” the complaint reads.
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Another former employee named in the suit, Chang Liu, is accused of using an authentication vulnerability to download dozens of hardware files before leaving the company.
