Apple Shares 'Shocking Evidence' Against Former Employee

Apple dropped what it calls "shocking evidence" in its ongoing trade-secret lawsuit against OpenAI on August 31, built from forensic analysis of a MacBook that former senior engineer Chang Liu used after leaving Apple for OpenAI in January 2026. The laptop, handed over by Liu's own legal counsel, allegedly contains a confidential Apple circuit schematic that Liu not only downloaded but actively used in his OpenAI engineering work — two months after his departure date.

Background You Need

Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI, filed in July, centers on accusations that former employees exploited insider access to funnel proprietary engineering data to a direct competitor. The two employees named are Chang Liu and Tang Tan. Liu worked as a senior system electrical engineer at Apple before departing for OpenAI in January 2026, joining what has become a substantial talent pipeline between the two companies. Multiple reports confirm that more than 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI — a figure that frames this lawsuit as something larger than a single disgruntled departure.

The core accusation is not that Liu passively walked out with files on a thumb drive. Apple alleges he exploited what it describes as "a rare, previously unknown authentication bug" to access Apple's third-party cloud storage after his employment ended. That distinction matters legally: it positions Liu's post-departure data access not as a careless IT oversight but as a deliberate exploitation of a security vulnerability he was uniquely positioned to know existed. Apple moved for a preliminary injunction to block OpenAI's hardware work, while simultaneously pushing the court to expedite discovery — including depositions of key OpenAI employees and executives.

OpenAI's initial legal posture, according to multiple reports, was that Liu had accessed files only to assist former colleagues who requested help, framing his post-employment activity as informal and essentially harmless. The company has also moved to have the case dismissed entirely. That defense looks considerably more fragile in light of what Apple's forensic team found on the returned MacBook.

What's New

The new filing, submitted August 31, is grounded in an "initial forensic analysis" of Liu's Apple-issued MacBook — turned over by his attorneys earlier in August. 9to5Mac and MacRumors both covered the filing in detail, and Apple's four specific findings are striking in how precisely they map alleged wrongdoing to identifiable technical work.

The most technically concrete finding: Liu downloaded a confidential Apple circuit schematic in March 2026 — two full months after leaving the company — and then ran it through LTspice, a widely used electrical engineering simulation tool, to model power conversion behavior. MacRumors reports that he messaged colleagues describing the work, writing that he was trying to "make a behavior buck," a reference to a buck converter, a class of DC-to-DC power conversion circuit common in hardware design. That technical detail directly links an identifiable category of Apple intellectual property to a specific engineering discipline being pursued at OpenAI.

Second, and most damaging to the "just helping former colleagues" defense: forensic analysis allegedly shows that Liu and others at OpenAI were fully aware his access to Apple's cloud storage was unauthorized. That is not a minor clarification — it directly contradicts the narrative OpenAI has offered and implicates people beyond Liu himself in the knowledge of what was happening.

Third, the filing documents what Apple characterizes as active obstruction. Upon learning that Apple had opened an internal investigation into him, Liu sent evidence-destruction instructions to an OpenAI colleague identified as Yu-Ting Peng, who reportedly confirmed she would follow through. That allegation transforms the case from a civil IP dispute into something with potential criminal exposure extending beyond the original defendants.

The fourth finding is the one most likely designed to support the injunction request: Liu was using a tool at OpenAI that carries the same name as a proprietary internal Apple engineering application. The filing does not specify whether the tool's functionality mirrors its Apple namesake — only that the name matches. Our read is that Apple included this detail not because name similarity alone constitutes theft, but because it builds a pattern for the court: schematic, simulation, named tool, awareness of unauthorized access. Each element alone is arguable; together, they are harder to dismiss.

The AI dimension of this case deserves its own paragraph. According to MacRumors, Liu described in messages how he trained an AI agent to operate LTspice autonomously — the agent could examine simulation results and tune parameters without Liu manually running each step. A task that previously took a full day now took two hours. His messaging partner reportedly replied: "Oh man! Why do they even need you then?" That exchange will almost certainly appear in court filings, and not only for its irony. It establishes that whatever Liu was doing with Apple's schematic, he was doing it at the frontier of AI-assisted hardware design — exactly the territory both companies are racing to own.

The Pushback

OpenAI has called for outright dismissal of Apple's lawsuit, and that posture has not changed publicly with this new filing. The company may still contest the interpretation of the forensic evidence, the chain of custody for the returned MacBook, or what "using" a schematic actually demonstrates in the context of simulation work. Running an Apple schematic through LTspice to study power conversion behavior is meaningfully different from copying a product design wholesale — and Liu's attorneys will likely make that argument.

There is also a structural reality worth naming plainly: Apple has significant competitive interest in slowing OpenAI's hardware ambitions, and the preliminary injunction request — blocking OpenAI's hardware work entirely — is an aggressive ask by any legal standard. Courts set a high bar for injunctions, and Apple must demonstrate both irreparable harm and a likelihood of success on the merits. Whether the recovered laptop's contents clear that bar is a question for the judge. What is already clear is that with 400-plus former Apple engineers now at OpenAI, Apple's legal team is using this case to send a message to the broader talent market — one that is at least as deliberate as anything in the court filings themselves.

Sources