Apple shares ‘shocking evidence’ against former employee accused of stealing company data for OpenAI

Apple filed what it calls shocking evidence in its lawsuit against OpenAI after former Apple employee Chang Liu's work laptop was handed over for investigation. Apple alleges Liu used a confidential circuit schematic at OpenAI and that he and OpenAI colleague Yu-Ting Peng helped destroy evidence after an investigation began. The public filing redacts the new evidence.

Apple is seeking a preliminary injunction blocking OpenAI from working on hardware based on Apple technology, along with expedited discovery because it says more former employees may be implicated. OpenAI says Liu accessed files after leaving to help former colleagues and argues residual access reflected Apple's own failure to manage permissions.

The allegations put identity and access management at the center of a very expensive kind of employee-mobility dispute. Apple says Liu retained access by exploiting a rare, previously unknown authentication bug. OpenAI says Apple is shifting blame for residual access. Both positions point to the same operational weakness: an employee can leave a company while the data path remains open.

The alleged use of a circuit schematic matters because the dispute is not limited to abstract talent movement. Apple is trying to connect a specific confidential artifact to OpenAI's hardware work, while OpenAI contests the account. The court, not the headlines, will determine what the laptop evidence establishes.

Signal Desk's read: the immediate business signal is not that one company has proved theft. It is that frontier AI hiring is creating a new class of supply-chain and offboarding risk. With Apple saying more than 400 former employees now work at OpenAI, every portable credential and copied file becomes potential litigation material.

The injunction request makes this more than a damages fight. If Apple can show confidential technology is being used in a hardware program, it can seek to slow the product before the merits are settled. That raises the value of clean provenance, access logs, and documented employee transitions for every AI company recruiting from hardware incumbents.

The article reports allegations in ongoing litigation, not findings after trial. Apple's filing is partly redacted, and OpenAI has previously defended Liu. The requests described are a preliminary injunction and expedited discovery.