Elon Musk waited less than 24 hours. Apple filed its trade secret lawsuit against OpenAI on Friday, July 10, in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing the ChatGPT-maker of stealing confidential hardware information “at every level”—from technical staff to its chief hardware officer. By Saturday, Musk was back on X with his favourite nickname, calling the OpenAI CEO “Scam Altman” and posting that he “takes scamming to a whole new level.”Altman did not stay quiet this time. The OpenAI boss fired back at Musk’s SpaceX ambitions, writing: “homeboy you’re the one selling public market investors on short-term space datacenters.” That post pulled over 10 million views. What followed was a weekend of public sparring between two of the most powerful men in tech, playing out under a lawsuit that could reshape who builds the next generation of AI hardware.
What Apple actually alleged in its OpenAI trade secret lawsuit
Apple’s complaint names OpenAI’s chief hardware officer Tang Tan, a 24-year Apple veteran who led design for the iPhone and Apple Watch, and Chang Liu, a former iPhone hardware engineer who joined OpenAI in January 2026. Apple alleges Tan directed job candidates still employed at Apple to bring “actual parts” to interviews for “show and tell” sessions. Liu, according to the filing, kept an Apple-issued laptop after leaving, exploited an authentication bug to reach Apple’s shared network folders, and downloaded dozens of confidential hardware files on unreleased products. Apple says he left a message on a colleague’s laptop calling the access “so funny.”The company also claims OpenAI approached one of its manufacturing partners to demonstrate a metal-finishing technique Apple invented, while misleading the partner into thinking Apple had signed off. Apple sent OpenAI a warning letter in February 2026. OpenAI, the lawsuit says, never replied.OpenAI’s spokesperson Drew Pusateri offered a flat denial: “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.”
Why Elon Musk cares so much about an Apple lawsuit he is not part of
Musk lost his own case against OpenAI in May. A nine-member jury in Oakland took under two hours to find that he had waited too long to sue over OpenAI’s for-profit restructuring. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers dismissed his claims on the spot. He called it a “calendar technicality” and promised an appeal.Apple’s lawsuit hands him vindication he could not win in court, and he spent the weekend collecting it. His first reaction to the news was a two-word verdict: “Scam Altman strikes again …” When one user posted the section of the complaint detailing Liu’s laptop access, Musk replied simply, “Sounds pretty bad.” To another calling it a “corporate culture of theft and criminality,” he added: “Bigtime.” Reacting to a thread breaking down how Apple caught OpenAI—a candidate allegedly screenshotting confidential files on his Apple work laptop hours before an OpenAI interview—Musk wrote: “They sure put a lot of effort into this crime.“Then came the escalation. Sharing a clip of Altman’s Senate testimony captioned “I’m doing this because I love it,” Musk posted: “By ‘this’ he means scamming.” He followed it with: “He might literally love scamming more than any human alive!” And finally, the longest jab: “We start flying them next year. Maybe you can come see them if your parole officer approves. After stealing an open source AI charity, you then stole all of Apple’s phone technology! Wow. What do you plan for an encore? That’s tough to beat.”Altman’s counterpunch was almost gleeful. “There are a lot of benchmarks that suggest 5.6 Sol is the best model in the world right now, but the most reliable way to tell is that Elon is obsessed with me again.”When a supporter posted that Altman “wasn’t afraid of Elon but he is terrified of Apple,” he replied: “i am not afraid of apple, but i have tremendous respect for them. s-tier company.” Musk’s response to that exchange was a single crying-laughing emoji.
The real fight is over what replaces the smartphone
Strip away the insults and this is a hardware war. OpenAI paid $6.5 billion last year for io Products, the design studio founded by Jony Ive, Apple’s former design chief. More than 400 ex-Apple employees now work at OpenAI, per the lawsuit. Apple is reportedly building smart glasses, pendants, and camera-equipped AirPods. OpenAI is said to be working on a phone where AI agents replace apps entirely.Apple wants an injunction, its intellectual property returned, and OpenAI forced to redesign products built on allegedly stolen work. It is asking for a jury trial. For a company preparing a historic IPO, that timing could not be worse.
