OpenAI has answered Apple’s trade-secrets accusations with an allegation of its own. The Verge reported on October 14 that a filing submitted Wednesday accuses an unnamed former OpenAI employee of taking more than 100 files tied to the company’s product plans before joining Apple. The allegation has not been tested in court.

According to OpenAI’s filing, the employee sent the material to a personal account and later presented it to Apple leaders, including a vice president responsible for the company’s operations in Asia. The Verge did not identify the employee or report the person’s response to the accusation.

Sealed engineering folders travel from a secure archive through a private channel to an executive room.
OpenAI alleges that a former employee moved product files before joining Apple.

OpenAI says the disputed files include images of at least one unreleased device, supplier information, engineering data, project files, standards for cosmetic finishes, and reports concerning the coating and sealing of hardware components. Those descriptions come from OpenAI’s filing; the public report does not independently establish what the files contain or whether Apple used them.

The company also tries to connect the alleged presentation to Apple’s newly announced HomeView smart display and other devices introduced this week. OpenAI claims the presentation occurred months earlier and argues that Apple is now making a fresh push into AI-enabled hardware while possessing OpenAI’s information. That is an inference advanced by OpenAI, not evidence that Apple’s products were derived from the files.

There is an important reason for caution. As The Verge notes, Apple develops products on long timelines, and its smart-display plans had been rumored for years. The sequence described in the filing therefore does not by itself show that the former employee’s presentation influenced a product already moving through Apple’s development process.

Opposing legal folders sit beside obscured prototype devices and unresolved evidence paths.
The filing presents allegations, while product influence and wrongdoing remain unproven.

The dispute also reverses the companies’ roles in the broader case. Apple has accused OpenAI of taking confidential documents and examining hardware prototypes to support OpenAI’s own device work. In the new filing, OpenAI is the company warning that a rival may possess its product and manufacturing information.

OpenAI says it is concerned that its confidential material is circulating within Apple, where engineers could use it to shape future products. Apple did not immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment, leaving the filing’s account unanswered in the report.

Several central facts remain unresolved: who the former employee is, what Apple leaders were shown, whether the files circulated beyond the presentation, and whether any Apple product team relied on them. No court finding cited by The Verge establishes wrongdoing by the employee or Apple. For now, the filing expands a one-directional theft case into a two-sided contest over how rival AI hardware programs obtained—and protected—their product knowledge.