Apple reportedly sends legal-hold letters to ex-staff now at OpenAI in trade-secret fight

Apple has reportedly sent legal-hold letters to about 40 former Apple employees now working at OpenAI, instructing them to preserve documents and communications relevant to its trade-secret lawsuit against the AI company.

The letters, said to have gone out around July 17, 2026, escalate a suit Apple filed the week of July 10 — the newest turn in a fight over how OpenAI built out its hardware ambitions. Apple’s complaint alleges OpenAI has hired more than 400 former Apple employees and engaged in a ‘coordinated pattern of misconduct,’ including asking job candidates to bring Apple ‘design artefacts and prototypes’ to interviews.

The suit names co-founders of Io, the hardware startup OpenAI acquired for $6.5 billion, among them Tang Yew Tan, OpenAI’s chief hardware officer and a 24-year Apple veteran, along with designer Jony Ive, Scott Cannon and Evans Hankey. OpenAI already held a 23% stake in Io before the deal closed.

OpenAI has said it is ‘not aware of any evidence that this complaint has merit.’ Apple has not detailed which specific trade secrets it says were taken, and preservation letters are a routine early step in litigation, not a finding of wrongdoing.

The account rests on reporting the companies have not confirmed beyond OpenAI’s denial. The next test is whether Apple’s complaint identifies concrete misappropriated secrets, or whether the case reads as an aggressive response to a talent exodus.