OpenAI Publishes Internal Texts, Says Apple Employees Helped Chang Liu Move Files

OpenAI published internal iMessages and email threads on Tuesday rebutting Apple's trade secret lawsuit, accusing Apple of misrepresenting its timeline and building its case on facts it has since walked back. The emails show Apple's outside counsel Gabriel Gross of Weil, Gotshal & Manges mistakenly emailed OpenAI General Counsel Che Chang on February 23, and the iMessages show former Apple employee Chang Liu's colleague asking for help transferring files via AirDrop after Liu's departure on January 22, 2026. OpenAI's post, titled "Apple is getting this wrong," argues the messages undercut Apple's claims that Liu retained confidential files and that OpenAI ignored its allegations.

OpenAI has published a lengthy public rebuttal to Apple’s trade secret lawsuit, releasing internal iMessages and email threads it says undercut Apple’s version of events. The post, titled “Apple is getting this wrong,” accuses Apple of misrepresenting its own timeline of communications and of building a case on facts the company has since had to quietly walk back. The lawsuit itself, filed by Apple https://officechai.com/ai/how-apple-alleges-former-employees-chang-liu-and-alyssa-peng-stole-its-secrets-for-openai/ in July, named OpenAI, its hardware unit io Products, Chief Hardware Officer Tang Tan, and former Apple employee Chang Liu as defendants. Apple accused Liu of downloading confidential files after leaving the company and accused OpenAI leadership of encouraging a pattern of trade secret theft from ex-Apple staff working on its hardware efforts. What Apple originally claimed According to OpenAI’s post, Apple’s court filings asserted two things: that Apple’s outside lawyers contacted OpenAI in February about the allegations and received no response, and that Apple had a direct conversation with OpenAI’s General Counsel about the matter. OpenAI says both claims are false, and that Apple has since admitted as much. The email mix-up OpenAI’s post includes the full email chain between Apple’s outside counsel Gabriel Gross, of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, and OpenAI General Counsel Che Chang. The emails show Gross sent Chang a letter on February 23 addressed to “Mr. Chang,” followed minutes later by a second email that appeared to be intended for someone else entirely. Chang wrote back to Apple’s in-house counsel the same evening: “This guy from Weil claims to be representing you. For some reason, he is lying about speaking with me on the phone. I don’t know who he is and we have never spoken.” Gross replied the following day admitting the error, explaining that after sending Chang the letter he had accidentally continued the thread with him instead of with Wang, the former Apple employee whose retention of company information had prompted the original letter: “After we had emailed Mr. Wang yesterday about retaining Apple information, he promptly called me and offered to cooperate with Apple in resolving any issues. I then intended to email him again, but accidentally replied to my email chain with you instead.” Apple’s in-house counsel confirmed the mix-up two days later, writing that Weil was Apple’s counsel on the matter and directing further questions to the firm. OpenAI says this exchange is the entirety of what Apple describes in its complaint as contact “raising the allegations” — and that the specific claims eventually made in the lawsuit were never actually put to OpenAI before it was filed five months later. The Chang Liu messages The second thread OpenAI released is a set of iMessages between Chang Liu, whose last day at Apple was January 22, 2026, and a former colleague at the company, redacted throughout as “Apple Employee 1.” Apple’s complaint centers on Liu allegedly retaining confidential files after departure. OpenAI’s framing is that the messages show the opposite: Apple staff actively asking Liu for help locating files and information after he had already left. The exchange opens on Liu’s last day, with the colleague asking to meet him at his desk and later at “the coffee machine.” Messages that follow reference transferring files via AirDrop: “I found a 64GB drive. Do you think that will work?” The next morning, the colleague writes: “Good morning. I hope you slept well. Maybe you are still sleeping. I’m back in the office and restarting the airdrop as it didn’t work. My plan is to complete the airdrop and then click the sad button in workday.” Liu thanks him for the help, and at one point directs him toward additional material: “If you have time you can also try to airdrop all other file in my apple iCloud folder.” Days later, on January 27, Liu tells the colleague he is fine leaving his iCloud account signed in on the office laptop so the transfer could continue, but asks him to sign out of iMessage specifically, writing that “there might be my new company stuff showing up in that laptop.” The colleague apologizes for the delay and confirms he “won’t look at anything else.” The thread continues into February and March, with the same Apple employee messaging Liu for technical recollections from his old role, at one point asking him to “point me to an EE who may have some knowledge” on a specific project. One message in March, sent in a group thread that appears to include other Apple staff, prompts a third participant to write: “Hi, this is highly irregular, please remove me from this thread.” What OpenAI is arguing OpenAI’s central claim is that Apple has a known internal problem with what it calls “residual access” — former employees retaining system access after departure because of gaps in Apple’s own offboarding process — and that the company is using Liu’s case to obscure that. On the allegations against Tan, OpenAI says he has been explicit internally about not wanting or using competitors’ confidential information, and points to his more than two decades at Apple as context for the claim that he’d risk that record. OpenAI is asking the court to deny Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction, arguing it rests on the same disputed factual claims. The company says it reached out to Apple to resolve the dispute directly after the suit was filed and was rebuffed, and expects Apple to continue what it describes as a pattern of shifting allegations against other unnamed former employees. Apple has not yet issued a public response to OpenAI’s post or the documents attached to it. The case adds to a growing list of trade secret disputes touching OpenAI’s hardware ambitions; the company is also fighting a separate lawsuit from Elon Musk’s xAI https://officechai.com/ai/xai-sues-openai-for-using-its-former-cfo-and-engineer-to-steal-trade-secrets/ making similar allegations about recruitment of departing employees.