Apple has widened its trade secret fight with OpenAI, sending legal preservation letters to about 40 former Apple staffers who now work at the AI lab. The letters direct recipients to hold onto internal documents and communications tied to Apple’s lawsuit, according to the Financial Times. It signals Apple expects the case to reach well beyond the two engineers it originally named as defendants.
The letters follow a lawsuit Apple filed on July 10 accusing OpenAI of pulling confidential hardware and product development information out of the company through engineers it hired away. Apple names two defendants: Tang Tan, who ran product design at Apple for 24 years before taking the Chief Hardware Officer title at OpenAI, and Chang Liu, an electrical engineer who moved from Apple’s hardware organization into OpenAI’s device team. Apple is suing both for breach of contract, arguing their employment agreements barred them from carrying proprietary designs and manufacturing know-how to a new employer.
Apple’s complaint puts a number on the broader migration: OpenAI’s headcount now includes upward of 400 people who previously worked at Apple. That figure is doing legal work. Apple is using scale, not just the Tan and Liu hires, to argue the alleged misconduct is a pattern rather than two isolated departures. None of the roughly 40 letter recipients has been named as a defendant.
A preservation letter is a narrower instrument than a subpoena, but it carries real consequences. Once a recipient is notified, routine deletion of email, Slack messages, or device backups can be read by a court as spoliation, exposing that person, even a non-party, to sanctions. Sending dozens of these letters at once suggests Apple’s legal team is preparing for discovery that spans well past its two named defendants.
OpenAI disputed the underlying claims in a statement to Bloomberg on July 14, saying it is “not aware of any evidence that this complaint has merit.” The company has not commented specifically on the preservation letters. Apple’s suit asks a court to block OpenAI from using any Apple-derived information while developing its AI hardware device, and seeks damages on top of the breach of contract claims against Tan and Liu. Apple’s own filing describes the evidence gathered so far as the “tip of the iceberg.”
Apple has pursued trade secret claims against former staff before, including a 2025 suit over leaked iOS 26 details. This case differs in scope. Instead of a leak traced to one or two people, Apple is describing a talent pipeline of hundreds feeding a single competitor, and framing OpenAI’s hardware roadmap, not its models, as the point of exposure.
For engineers weighing a move between Apple, OpenAI, or any rival lab, the letters change what a hiring dispute can become. A preservation notice means personal devices, cloud accounts, and message histories tied to a prior employer are potentially discoverable, whether or not the recipient is ever sued. Any lab recruiting heavily from one competitor should expect its onboarding and IP-separation process to face the same scrutiny next.
MacRumors (Tim Hardwick) reported the preservation letters on July 17, 2026, citing the Financial Times as the original source of the employee count.
