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Apple filed a federal lawsuit in the Northern District of California accusing OpenAI, its hardware subsidiary io Products, and former Apple employees of systematically misappropriating trade secrets tied to unreleased hardware designs, manufacturing processes, and supplier relationships. The complaint names OpenAI hardware chief Tang Yew Tan and former Apple engineer Chang Liu, and alleges OpenAI recruiters asked Apple candidates to bring confidential prototypes, CAD files, design artifacts, and physical parts to interviews while using internal Apple project codenames to probe knowledge of unreleased products.
Apple also alleges former employees retained company equipment, accessed internal systems after departure, downloaded confidential engineering and manufacturing files, and shared guidance on bypassing Apple security and offboarding controls. The suit further claims OpenAI used insider knowledge to approach Apple suppliers and sought unauthorized use of a proprietary metal-finishing technique, as Apple pursues damages, return of materials, preservation of evidence, and court orders blocking any further use of its trade secrets despite the companies' ongoing partnership around ChatGPT integration in Apple Intelligence.
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According to Apple's complaint, former employee Chang Liu accessed Apple's cloud-based network storage in February 2026 by exploiting a previously unknown authentication bug after leaving the company. Apple alleges he copied dozens of confidential hardware-related files and misused the Apple-issued laptop and access of a still-employed worker; Apple later fixed the bug and terminated his access.
Apple filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California accusing OpenAI, io Products, and named former Apple personnel of systematically misappropriating Apple trade secrets related to hardware design, manufacturing, and supplier relationships. The suit seeks remedies including damages, return of materials, preservation of evidence, and restrictions on further use of the alleged trade secrets.
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A U.S. federal jury convicted former Google engineer **Linwei Ding** (aka **Leon Ding**) on **14 counts** spanning **economic espionage** and **theft of trade secrets** after prosecutors said he stole thousands of confidential Google documents tied to the company’s artificial intelligence technology for the benefit of a China-based startup. The U.S. Department of Justice framed the case as protection of U.S. intellectual property and national security, alleging the theft was intended to advantage the **People’s Republic of China (PRC)**. Reporting indicates Ding began exfiltrating internal materials as early as **May 2022**, including by copying content into the **Apple Notes** app, converting it to PDFs, and uploading it to a personal cloud account. The stolen information reportedly covered sensitive AI infrastructure and chip-related technology, including details associated with Google’s AI supercomputing environment (e.g., data center/cluster management components) and hardware/software used to run AI workloads (including **TPU/GPU systems** and related networking components). Ding was initially indicted in **March 2024**, with subsequent superseding indictments expanding the alleged timeframe and charges; the case is cited as *USA v. Ding*, N.D. Cal., No. `3:24-cr-00141`.
Jun 29, 2026
US federal prosecutors indicted **Samaneh Ghandali** and **Soroor Ghandali** (former Google engineers) and **Mohammadjavad Khosravi** (Samaneh’s husband, employed at another unnamed tech firm) for alleged **trade secret theft**, **conspiracy**, and **obstruction of justice** tied to the exfiltration of sensitive processor-related information. The Department of Justice alleges the trio used their roles at multiple Silicon Valley companies to access and steal confidential documents covering **processor security** and **cryptography**, and moved the material to unauthorized third-party and personal locations, including destinations linked to **Iran**. Investigators allege the activity included transferring large volumes of internal files to external communications platforms and sharing them in channels associated with the defendants, with additional copies later found on personal devices and systems connected to the group. Prosecutors also claim the defendants attempted to conceal the scheme through actions such as destroying records, making false statements, and photographing screens to avoid direct document transfers. Google said it enhanced safeguards and alerted law enforcement after discovering the incident; the alleged stolen trade secrets reportedly included information related to Google’s **Tensor** processor used in *Pixel* phones.
Jun 29, 2026
The White House has accused China-linked actors and other foreign entities of running **industrial-scale AI model extraction and distillation campaigns** against U.S. frontier AI companies, saying the operations use tens of thousands of proxy or fraudulent accounts, jailbreaking techniques, distributed probing, and iterative prompt engineering to copy proprietary model behavior at scale. A memorandum from Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios said the activity targets American AI innovation without requiring a traditional network breach, and warned that derivative systems may reproduce benchmark performance while stripping away safety controls, neutrality safeguards, and other protections built into the original models. Federal agencies have been directed to expand information sharing with AI firms and develop best practices for detecting, mitigating, and remediating the campaigns, with officials pointing to stronger telemetry, logging, identity controls, and real-time detection of distributed abuse as likely defenses. The administration is also weighing accountability measures, including possible sanctions and legal or export-control actions, while lawmakers advance legislation to identify and punish foreign actors targeting U.S.-owned AI models; China has rejected the allegations as "slander" and unjustified suppression, even as prior claims from OpenAI and Anthropic tied Chinese firms including **DeepSeek**, **Moonshot**, and **MiniMax** to large-scale distillation efforts.
Jun 29, 2026