Apple Leaves Jony Ive Out of OpenAI Lawsuit

Apple has sued OpenAI and two former Apple employees, accusing them of stealing trade secrets and poaching staff for future AI devices. But one name is missing from the complaint: Jony Ive.

That omission stands out because Ive has become the public face of OpenAI’s hardware push and remains one of Apple’s most prominent alumni. In his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says Apple likely left him out on purpose, partly because the evidence may be weak and partly because naming him would have turned a technical legal fight into a very public personal drama.

Instead, Apple’s complaint focuses on a group of former executives and employees it says were involved in taking confidential information, while separately describing efforts to recruit people away from the company. According to the report, more than 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI, and the company’s hardware division is led by former Apple executive Tang Tan.

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For Apple, that makes this more than a dispute with a startup. It is facing a team building consumer AI devices with deep knowledge of how the iPhone maker operates internally.

Why Apple may have avoided naming Ive

Gurman argues that Apple could have won in court and still lost in public. A direct accusation against Ive would have shifted the story from a corporate dispute to a messy fight involving former allies, diverging careers, and one of Apple’s most enduring design legends.

There may also be a more delicate layer. Laurene Powell Jobs maintains ties with both Apple and Ive, and also invested in io Products, the startup now linked with OpenAI. In that context, a direct move against Ive could have affected not just Apple’s image, but sensitive personal relationships across Silicon Valley.

Gurman also points to a simpler explanation: Ive does not appear to have been involved in day-to-day hiring, operations, or efforts to bypass internal controls. Apple’s complaint reportedly includes requests to bring Apple hardware to interviews and discussions about getting around security measures, but those allegations are tied to the employees Apple actually named.

OpenAI denies the claims. Spokesperson Drew Pusateri said the company has no interest in other firms' trade secrets and is focused on building its own technology.

At the same time, Apple is not relying only on litigation. Gurman reports that the company is testing Live Notes in some stores, an AI system that records, transcribes, and summarizes conversations between employees and customers. That suggests Apple is also bringing AI into retail operations even as the larger fight shifts toward hardware — and toward who gets future AI devices to market first.