OpenAI's first device is months away. Apple has asked a court to bar it from using anything Apple calls its own.

Apple is no longer just suing OpenAI. In early August it asked a federal judge for an order barring OpenAI from "accessing, acquiring, using, or disclosing Apple confidential or trade secret information in any manner", and argued it faces irreparable harm without one. In a separate motion it asked to fast-track discovery and to put four people under oath, including OpenAI's chief hardware officer.

OpenAI's answer was short. Apple's request, it said, "is both based on false information and completely unnecessary because we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets." It called the claims careless, aggressive and oddly personal.

Somewhere behind all of that is a device that nobody outside OpenAI has seen, which is reportedly due to be unveiled in the second half of this year.

That's the part worth paying attention to. Not who wins. What the fight is over.

What OpenAI actually bought

In 2025, OpenAI acquired io Products in a deal reported at around $6.5 billion. It wasn't buying a product. It was buying the ability to make one.

Among the people who came with it was Tang Yew Tan, io's co-founder, who spent roughly 24 years at Apple and whose responsibilities there included product design for the iPhone and the Apple Watch. He is now OpenAI's chief hardware officer. He is also, since 10 July, a named defendant in Apple's lawsuit, alongside a former Apple engineer, io Products itself, and OpenAI.

It's worth being precise about a number that gets thrown around loosely. Apple's complaint says more than 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI. That's company-wide, across every function. It is not the size of a hardware team, and anyone telling you 400 ex-Apple people are building this device is reading the filing carelessly.

What OpenAI is building, according to reporting rather than to OpenAI, is a screenless home device. Portable. Some form of movement. Voice-controlled, able to run home appliances, and designed to learn its owner over time, including from things like their email, so it can make suggestions instead of waiting to be asked. Mark Gurman has reported a rounded form factor in the region of $300 to $400.

Mark Gurman

@markgurman

The big takeaway here is that it looks, feels and acts nothing like an Apple product or anything the company is currently planning. OpenAI hasn’t found any evidence they’re violating trade secrets with this device, I’m told.

964

6 Aug 2026

Unveiling is expected in the second half of 2026. Shipping is expected around 2027.

So: a company with more money than almost anyone, holding a hardware team led by the person who oversaw the design of the most successful consumer product of the century, roughly a quarter of the way through the year it plans to show its first device.

That is the context Apple filed into.

The escalation, and why the calendar matters

Apple's original complaint on 10 July asked for the usual things. Stop using our trade secrets, give back our materials, preserve the evidence.

Early August was different. The preliminary injunction motion asks a court to act now rather than at trial, which is a much heavier request and requires Apple to argue that waiting would cause it harm it can't undo. The expedited discovery motion asks to compel documents immediately and to depose the two former Apple employees named in the case, plus another OpenAI staff member who used to work at Apple and one unnamed person in the same position.

Look at those two motions next to the reported unveiling window and the strategy is not subtle. Apple is trying to get a court order and sworn testimony in place before OpenAI puts a product on a stage.

Whether it succeeds is not something I'm going to guess at, and no court has ruled on any of this. But you don't need a prediction to notice the shape of it. Apple has moved from asserting a claim to trying to constrain a competitor's programme on a timeline, and it has said in a filing that the harm is irreparable.

Jim Cramer's read on it was "gloves off", which is about the level of analysis the situation deserves.

What Apple's filings say is inside the thing

Here's where it gets genuinely interesting, and where I want to be careful, because it's easy to overstate.

Apple's filings are not a specification for OpenAI's device. What they are is a map of what Apple believes ended up inside OpenAI's hardware programme, and Apple had to describe that in some detail in order to make its case.

The most substantive of those details is not a document at all. Apple alleges that OpenAI or people associated with it approached one of Apple's own trusted manufacturing partners and had it carry out a specific trade-secret metal-finishing technique, having misled the partner into believing Apple had approved it.

Read that as an engineering signal rather than a legal one. A finishing technique performed by a supplier is not something you commission while sketching concepts. It's what you do when you have a physical part and you're working out how to make a lot of them. If the allegation is accurate, it places the programme well past the whiteboard.

The complaint also lists categories of Apple components that it alleges were carried out of Apple offices and shown at OpenAI job interviews: batteries, systems-in-package, main logic boards, shields. Those are the internals of a small powered device. But be careful with them, because they're Apple's description of what it says was taken, not a parts list for OpenAI's product. It would be a mistake to read that list as the device's bill of materials, and it's the kind of mistake a defendant's lawyer would enjoy.

Apple alleges the executive at the centre of the case used an internal Apple project code name in an interview to ask "What's the plan[?]" about an unannounced Apple product. It describes the conduct it found as "the tip of the iceberg", and says OpenAI's hardware business "rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core".

All of that is allegation. It's also, taken together, the most specific public account anyone has of what one of OpenAI's competitors thinks is going on inside its hardware group.

OpenAI's version

OpenAI's position is not a partial defence. It's a flat denial that it has or wants any of this.

Its motion to dismiss argues Apple hasn't adequately identified what its trade secrets actually are, and that the complaint rests on "selectively excerpted communications and ordinary conduct stripped of context". It says the executive told candidates not to bring confidential material. It borrows Apple's own phrase and calls the complaint rotten to its core.

And it makes an argument about motive that's harder to dismiss than it first sounds: that Apple is using litigation to compensate for losing a talent war and for being late to ship AI in its own products.

Utsav Techie

@utsavtechie

OpenAI filed a motion to dismiss Apple’s July 2026 trade secrets lawsuit, calling it “baseless and pretextual” and accusing Apple of using litigation to mask its talent retention issues and AI product integration shortcomings.

88

6 Aug 2026

There's a design argument in there too. Gurman's reporting notes the device looks, feels and acts nothing like an Apple product, and that on his information OpenAI has found no evidence of a trade-secret violation. That matters more than it sounds, because if the finished object is nothing like anything Apple makes, Apple's harm becomes harder to describe.

The counter to that, made in various forms since July, is that a different-looking product doesn't dispose of a process claim. Manufacturing methods, supplier relationships and component specifications aren't visible in a photograph.

The case isn't built on schematics

For a fight about billion-dollar hardware, the evidence Apple has put forward is startlingly mundane. There are no stolen blueprints in the filings. There are text messages.

Apple alleges that a former engineer, three weeks after leaving, worked out he could still reach an internal Apple system through an authentication flaw, and messaged a former colleague about it: "LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage], so funny." Apple says it fixed the flaw once it found out. It also alleges that within hours of his last day the same engineer wrote "I still have another computer" that he intended to use to get at Apple information.

There's a document, too. Apple alleges its former executive retained an internal Apple managers' guide, marked "Need to Know", describing the company's own security procedures for handling staff departures, and that it was shared with people joining OpenAI before they gave notice to Apple. OpenAI staff, according to the complaint, referred to it as "a checklist that Tang put together", apparently not realising whose checklist it was.

All allegations. None tested.

And then the part that turns it around. OpenAI's answer to all of this isn't only that the conduct was ordinary. It's that Apple didn't protect the information well enough for it to be a trade secret in the first place.

A trade secret generally has to be treated like one. OpenAI's filing points at Apple permitting staff to use personal iCloud accounts for work, and at access that wasn't revoked when people left. Reporting on the exhibits describes an Apple manager who stayed logged into a departing engineer's personal iCloud account after he'd gone, moved files out of it, and later texted him for help.

That's not a side argument, and it's why it belongs in a story about hardware. An injunction is a heavy remedy, and Apple has to establish that what it's protecting was genuinely protected. If a court finds the handling was loose enough to weaken that, the fastest route to slowing a competitor's launch closes off.

Two of the most sophisticated companies on the planet are in federal court arguing about the quality of an offboarding process. Neither is arguing it was excellent.

What this actually tells us about the hardware race

Strip out the litigation and three things are left standing.

Hardware is where the AI competition is heading, and everyone involved knows it. OpenAI didn't spend around $6.5 billion on a design studio for fun. It did it because a subscription to a chat interface is a weaker position than a thing on your kitchen bench that knows you. Apple's response to a rival entering that space has been to go to court and argue irreparable harm. Neither of those is the behaviour of a company that thinks this is a side quest.

The talent pipeline is the real contested asset. Not patents, not models. People who have shipped hardware at scale, of whom there are very few, most of whom worked at one company. That's an uncomfortable structural fact and it doesn't have a clean legal answer. Apple's own filing says over 400 of its former staff now work at OpenAI. Whatever the court decides about two of them, that number is the actual story about competitive advantage.

Manufacturing is the moat. The allegation that carries the most weight isn't about a document, it's about a supplier being asked to perform a specific finishing technique. Knowing how to have a thing made well, at volume, from partners who trust you, is the part that took Apple decades. It's also the part a well-funded newcomer would most want to shortcut, and the part that's hardest to build from scratch.

None of which tells you who's in the right. It does tell you why a company sitting on Apple's balance sheet is filing urgent motions about a screenless speaker.

What happens next

Apple's response to OpenAI's motion to dismiss is due 19 August. There are now two motion tracks running, so check which hearing date attaches to which motion before you rely on any of it. Discovery, if Apple gets the expedited version it asked for, would put OpenAI's chief hardware officer under oath.

And somewhere in the second half of this year, if the reporting holds, OpenAI intends to put a device on a stage.

Keep one thing in view while you wait for it. The most valuable consumer hardware programme launched in a decade, and the most aggressive legal response to one, both currently rest on an account that stayed open and a laptop that didn't come back.

Billions of dollars of strategy, and it comes down to whether somebody remembered to revoke a login.

Key Takeaways

The device:

• OpenAI acquired io Products in 2025, reported at around $6.5 billion, to build hardware in-house
• Its chief hardware officer previously spent ~24 years at Apple on iPhone and Apple Watch product design, and is a named defendant
• Reported as a screenless, portable, moving home device around $300-400, unveiling expected H2 2026, shipping ~2027

The escalation:

• Apple sued on 10 July, then in early August sought a preliminary injunction barring any use of its confidential information, arguing irreparable harm
• It also sought expedited discovery and depositions of four people, including the chief hardware officer
• OpenAI denies flatly: it does not have and does not want Apple's trade secrets, and calls the claims careless, aggressive and oddly personal
• The evidence is text messages and ordinary workplace failures, not stolen blueprints
• OpenAI's sharpest counter is that Apple didn't protect the information well enough for it to qualify as a trade secret at all
• No court has ruled on any allegation

What it says about the race:

• Hardware, not chat, is where both companies think this is going
• The contested asset is people who have shipped consumer hardware at scale, and there aren't many
• The allegation with the most engineering weight is a supplier being asked to perform a specific finishing technique, which suggests a programme well past concept stage

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