The Dutch National Police (Politie) says it has found “strong indications” that Dutch hackers have been involved in a February breach at the telecommunications provider Odido.

“This includes a telephone conversation that was made with Odido customer service shortly before the hack. In this conversation, a Dutch-speaking man posed as Odido’s IT employee. The company was then misled through phishing, after which the data theft took place,” the police said in a Thursday press release.

“This type of investigation is often complex and takes time, but cybercriminals are also vulnerable and leave traces. Traces have been secured at several times during the investigation into the hack at Odido, which the research team continued to work on,” added Stan Duijf, the head of operations at the National Investigation and Interventions Unit.

Odido is one of the largest Dutch telecommunications companies, offering mobile, broadband, and television services to millions of customers across the Netherlands.

When it disclosed the breach on February 12, the company said the attackers accessed its customer contact system on February 7 and downloaded the personal data of many of its users. It also told local media that the resulting data breach affected 6.2 million customers and that the threat actors reached out to say they had stolen millions of user records.

According to the telecom firm, the exposed information varies per customer, and it may include a combination of full name, address and city of residence, mobile number, customer number, email address, IBAN (bank account number), date of birth, and some identification details (passport or driver’s license number and validity).

However, it added that no call details, location, data, billing data, scans of identity documents, or Mijn Odido passwords were exposed during the incident.

While Odido has yet to attribute the incident, the ShinyHunters extortion gang claimed responsibility for the breach on its dark web leak site, releasing an 88GB archive containing over 15 million records, including data the company had already disclosed as exposed in the attack.

​ShinyHunters has been behind widespread vishing campaigns targeting Okta, Microsoft, and Google single sign-on (SSO) accounts, impersonating IT support staff to trick targets’ employees into entering credentials and multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes on phishing sites.

After breaching corporate SSO accounts, the threat actors steal data from connected SaaS applications, including Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, SAP, Slack, Zendesk, Dropbox, Adobe, Atlassian, and others.

The cybercrime group has been linked to a growing number of breaches involving companies such as Google, Cisco, PornHub, the online dating giant Match Group, the European Commission, Rockstar Games, and the McGraw-Hill edtech giant.

They were also behind security breaches at over a dozen Snowflake customers, various other third-party integration providers, and, more recently, a new series of breaches that hit over 100 organizations (including the University of Nottingham) following data-theft attacks exploiting an Oracle PeopleSoft zero-day flaw.

Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.

The Picus whitepaper shows how breach and attack simulation tests your SIEM and EDR rules so threats stop slipping by detection.

Get the whitepaper

Bigme built the HiBreak Dual 2 around a simple mechanical solution to a familiar problem. Regular smartphones deliver color, speed, and apps but wear out eyes during long reading sessions. Dedicated e-readers protect vision and sip power yet lack cameras, video, and quick multitasking. This device carries both screen types in one slab so owners turn it over instead of juggling separate gadgets.

The 6.13-inch E-ink display is available on one side. The black and white version measures 824 by 1648 pixels, which is a fairly acceptable resolution of roughly 300 pixels per inch. Color versions aren’t as sharp, but they do offer thousands of distinct colors without the need for a larger screen. Bigme rates the screen for up to 80 hertz refresh in supported modes. The front light has 36 brightness settings and can be tuned to warm or cool, making reading for extended durations more pleasant whether indoors or outside in bright sunlight. You can even write and draw straight on the screen; simply grab an optional pressure-sensitive stylus and you’re ready to go.

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Flip it over and on the other side, you’ll find a 5-inch LCD. That’s 1280 by 720 pixels of full-color action, ideal for viewing videos, scrolling through social media, playing games, or even using the camera, since the 50-megapixel sensor on the back works well with this display for framing images. You can also use your face to unlock the phone.

The MediaTek Dimensity 8300 processor handles everything on both screens. You can choose 12 or 16 gigabytes of RAM combined with 256 or 512 gigabytes of storage. Android 16 and Google Play are pre-installed, so you have the complete package. There are unique software fixes available to help apps work properly when you flip the smartphone around. Dual SIM 5G, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3, and stereo speakers complete the connectivity possibilities. The battery has 4450 milliamp hours and a 30w quick charger, albeit the E-Ink side does not draw much power as you sit there reading for hours on end. That will help you get more use out of your battery. Of course, if you use the LCD side frequently, your battery life will suffer, but Bigme believes you should be able to get through the day just fine.

Bigme improved on their previous dual-screen model. They ended up with a larger LCD around the back and a greater refresh rate on the front, but the essential idea remains the same. It’s still a physical flip, not simply software trickery. They also solicited user suggestions on how to improve the software’s usability, and it appears like they did a decent job of keeping the various aspects of the phone separate.

On Kickstarter, the base black and white model costs $599 and includes 12 gigabytes of RAM. If you want a color version or 16 gigabytes of RAM, you’ll need to pay $200 more. Each pledge includes a protective cover, and you can purchase the stylus separately. Bigme expects to begin distributing these out this fall, before the rest of the globe can get their hands on them at exorbitant retail pricing.

An enterprise AI agent answers with total confidence, but the number is wrong. Nobody catches it until someone traces it back to a stale metric definition or a document the retrieval system never pulled. The model did not fail. The context it was given did.

In the past six months, 57% of enterprises traced a confident but wrong AI agent answer to missing or inconsistent business context, and 31% said it happened more than once, according to a VB Pulse June 2026 survey of 101 qualified enterprises with more than 100 employees.

The reason is not hard to find. Retrieval over documents is the default way agents get business context for 38% of enterprises, nearly double the next closest approach. The way most enterprises choose a retrieval system compounds the problem. Ease of ingestion and operational simplicity lead the selection criteria, with retrieval accuracy running behind both. The accuracy problem only shows up after the system is already live.

There is a known fix for this, a governed context layer every agent reads from instead of guessing. Vendors are racing to roll out context platforms while most enterprises are still figuring out what it is.

75% don’t have an agentic context layer yet

The context layer is meant to be a shared model of what business data actually means, built once and referenced consistently instead of re-derived by every agent that touches it. 

The VentureBeat research shows the enterprise response to that idea is broad but unfinished. Twenty-five percent of respondents run one in production. Thirty-four percent are building one right now. The remaining 41% have not started.

Among companies already building or running a governed context layer, 78% report a confident-wrong failure — an AI agent that answered with total certainty and was still wrong. Among companies with no plans to build a layer, only 20% report the same thing. Companies that already got burned are far more likely to be building the fix. Companies that haven’t been burned yet see no urgency.

What governed context looks like when someone actually builds one

Every major data and AI platform vendor is now building some version of this layer, and they are not converging on the same architecture. 

• DataHub is treating catalog metadata and years of analyst query behavior as a knowledge source, then keeping it current as a living system rather than a static wiki. 

• Microsoft’s Fabric IQ is building a business ontology that any agent, not just Microsoft’s own, can query over MCP. 

• Couchbase is pushing agent memory and context retrieval down to the edge, arguing the operational database is a more natural home for it than a search or analytics layer bolted on after the fact. 

• Pinecone’s Nexus is compiling structural logic into the metadata layer ahead of runtime, betting that agents need pre-built structure more than they need faster search.

• Snowflake runs a two-layer system, Horizon Context for customer-managed definitions and Cortex Sense for context the platform infers on its own. 

• Oracle’s Unified Memory Core takes the opposite approach, folding vector, graph and relational data into one transactional engine so there is no sync layer left to go stale. 

• Google’s Knowledge Catalog mines query logs and usage patterns to curate semantic context automatically.

• AWS’s Context service makes the same bet, a knowledge graph that gets smarter from how agents actually use it rather than from manual re-curation.

Analysts converge on one diagnosis

The vendor approaches differ. What analysts and practitioners have told VentureBeat about the underlying problem, across a run of interviews this year, does not.

When DataHub’s context layer push landed this spring, Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Michael Ni framed the stakes in blunt terms. “Whoever controls runtime context controls the AI decision layer for enterprise data,” Ni said. He was equally direct about how far any single product actually gets a buyer. “Vector memory isn’t business meaning, business meaning isn’t governance and governance isn’t execution,” Ni said.

In the same interview, BARC analyst Kevin Petrie pointed to a narrower but concrete gap. Most context platforms concentrate on structured tables, he said, which give agents trusted facts but miss the harder, messier context locked in documents and unstructured content, exactly the material a business actually runs on day to day.

Stephanie Walter, practice leader for AI Stack at HyperFRAME Research, made a related point earlier this year when VentureBeat asked her about enterprise context fragmentation. 

“The market is converging on the same conclusion,” Walter said. “Agents don’t just need more tokens or better models. They need governed, current, low-latency context.” She made a similar case in an earlier review of Pinecone’s Nexus launch, careful not to overstate how new any of this is. Nexus, she said, “shifts knowledge work from runtime chaos to pre-compiled structure. But it’s an evolution of RAG architecture, not a complete reinvention.” 

Gartner’s Arun Chandrasekaran, reviewing the same launch, offered the more forward-looking read. Agentic AI, he said, is moving from pure information retrieval toward a reasoning architecture, one where long context works as short-term memory and a vector database functions as deep storage underneath it.

The fragmentation problem shows up hardest at the practitioner level, where separate tools for retrieval, memory and access control were never built to agree with each other. Steven Dickens, CEO and principal analyst at HyperFRAME Research, put it bluntly after Oracle’s AI database push landed this spring. “Data teams are exhausted by fragmentation fatigue,” Dickens said. “Managing a separate vector store, graph database and relational system just to power one agent is a DevOps nightmare.” 

Matt Kimball at Moor Insights and Strategy, in that same story, put the production reality more simply. Getting an agent working is not the hard part, he said. The struggle is running it in production, where the goal becomes removing the distance between data and execution rather than adding another layer on top of it.

What this means for enterprises

Here’s what this adds up to for enterprises building on this layer.

Retrieval alone will not close the context gap. RAG is the default source for context in most enterprises today, and it is also the layer most closely associated with the confident-wrong-answer failure. Adding more documents or a bigger index does not fix a definition that is inconsistent across systems.

The semantic context layer is where the budget is actually moving, even where it hasn’t shipped. Fifty-eight percent of enterprises are already engaged — building or in production — but only 25% have actually gotten a layer live. That gap shows where enterprises have decided to spend, not where they’ve arrived.

No single vendor owns the architecture yet, and that is likely to stay true for a while. Enterprises evaluating this layer should expect to integrate rather than pick a single winner, at least for the next several quarters.

The buying decision is happening this year, and it is concentrated among the companies already burned by it. Fifty-seven percent of enterprises plan to switch or add a retrieval or context platform within the next twelve months. That intent is not spread evenly. Enterprises that reported a repeat confident-wrong failure plan to switch or add a provider at roughly 81%, against 32% among enterprises that never hit the problem. The companies shopping for new context tooling right now are largely the ones whose agents already got it wrong.

The agents are already running. The context underneath most of them is still being built, and the vendor selling the fix is being chosen this year.

This data will be part of a broader conversation at VB Transform 2026 on July 14 and 15 in Menlo Park: the context gap enterprises are racing to close, and which of the emerging approaches — governed semantic layers, hybrid retrieval, provider-native bundles — actually holds up in production.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Wordle puzzle is tricky, with one very unusual letter included. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.

Read more: New Study Reveals Wordle’s Top 10 Toughest Words of 2025

Today’s Wordle hints

Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today’s Wordle answer has one repeated letter.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

Today’s Wordle answer has two vowels, but one is the repeated letter, so you’ll see that letter twice.

Wordle hint No. 3: First letter

Today’s Wordle answer begins with A.

Wordle hint No. 4: Last letter

Today’s Wordle answer ends with N.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today’s Wordle answer can refer to anything that relates to, resembles or is derived from birds.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Today’s Wordle answer is AVIAN.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle answer, July 10, No. 1847, was CANAL.

Recent Wordle answers

July 6, No. 1843: TODDY

July 7, No. 1844: SLING

July 8, No. 1845: DEMON

July 9, No. 1846: AMEND

Samsung’s summer Galaxy Unpacked keynote is set for July 22 in London. This midyear event is typically where the company unveils its latest generation of foldable devices — like the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7 — but this year things might take, let’s say, a different shape. Last week, the company began running Instagram posts teasing a rectangular shape.

“Samsung will introduce its latest Galaxy innovations that build on its leadership in foldables, combining intelligent capabilities and new form factors to deliver more personal, adaptive experiences and set a new standard for the AI era,” the company said in a statement announcing the event.

The event comes just months before Apple’s annual fall event, giving Samsung time to flex its foldable phone prowess ahead of the rumored launch of the iPhone foldable in September. Though Apple’s been rumored to have been working on an iPhone Fold for years, I’ll believe it when I see it. It’ll be interesting to watch what Samsung does with its latest generation of foldables in the meantime.

We’ll be on the ground in London to see everything that Samsung has to offer, but for those of you impatient to wait, the rumor mill has been churning with predictions about which new devices might be revealed, like the Galaxy Z Fold 8 (wide) and Z Fold Ultra. We could even see Galaxy smart glasses. Let’s dive into what the rumors suggest we’ll see. 

Watch this: The Future of Smart Glasses Is Coming This Fall

07:00

Galaxy ‘wide’ foldable

Samsung is currently in its 7th generation of Galaxy Fold devices, and we expect that both the Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7 will be refreshed with new processors, a few other tweaks and the number eight on its packaging. But it seems that company’s designers might be getting bored, as they’ve experimented with the folding form factor enough to bring new designs to market.

We’ve already had the wild Galaxy Z TriFold with its tablet-sized display released back in January, and now rumors suggest a wide version of the Fold that packs a 7.6-inch inner display with a 4:3 aspect ratio. That’d make it wider and narrower than the current almost square 1:1 aspect ratio of the Z Fold 7’s internal screen, which would theoretically make the new foldable’s inner display better for watching movies without wasted space for black bars at the top and bottom. 

There’s expected to be a more “regular” version of the Z Fold 8, which is said to follow the proportions of the Galaxy Z Fold 7. However, rumors suggest it will be rebranded with the “Ultra” moniker to differentiate it from its wider-format (and potentially less powerful) sibling. 

Galaxy XR Glasses

Google talked for some time about its mixed reality glasses at its I/O event earlier in the summer, including showing off Samsung’s upcoming glasses made in partnership with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. But details about the glasses themselves were a bit thin, with the extent of Samsung’s role held back — likely for the summer Unpacked event.

So while we know the glasses exist — and CNET’s Scott Stein has already tried some prototypes on — we’re excited to hear more details. The glasses will feature cameras and microphones (how else will you interact with Google’s Gemini AI?), but we crucially don’t know how much they’ll cost or exactly when they’ll be going on sale. 

There’s likely to be more talk about features and usability at Unpacked, and I’m hoping it’ll have a fancy try-on section where I can pop some on my face and see whether my wife can still stand the sight of me.

Galaxy Watch 9 and Watch Ultra 2

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Rumors fueled by firmware updates and certification filings suggest Samsung will showcase two new smartwatches at this year’s Unpacked event. The Watch Ultra 2 — the company’s more rugged, outdoor-focused model — is rumored to get a huge battery boost up to 800 mAh. That’d be the biggest of any Wear OS watch and should help it keep on tracking your wilderness hikes long after your legs have given up from exhaustion. 

The Galaxy Watch 9 is also rumored to get a bit of a battery boost, along with both models featuring new processors and potentially refreshed designs. 

Galaxy Ring 2 — but probably not

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In a Forbes report, Samsung has confirmed that it is officially working on the Galaxy Ring 2, the follow-up to its 2024 finger-based health tracker. The company’s next ring is expected to get a boost in battery life, feature more advanced tracking and likely come with a refreshed design. 

But it’s worth noting that while the ring might be in active development, it likely won’t get launched at July’s Unpacked event. While I wouldn’t be surprised to see a teaser of some kind, it’s likely that Samsung would unveil its next Galaxy Ring either at CES in the beginning of 2027 or at Mobile World Congress shortly after. 

How to watch Galaxy Unpacked

Samsung’s event will be livestreamed on Samsung’s website and Samsung’s YouTube channel, beginning at 9 a.m. ET/ 6 a.m. PT/2 p.m. BST on July 22.

A 34-year-old Armenian man has pleaded guilty to hacking U.S. companies and deploying the infamous Ryuk ransomware to encrypt their systems.

Karen Serobovich Vardanyan was extradited to the United States after being arrested in Kyiv in April 2025 for providing initial access to corporate networks.

According to court documents, Vardanyan helped deploy Ryuk ransomware on the networks of multiple U.S. organizations between November 2019 and April 2020 after illegally accessing their systems.

In one attack, Vardanyan and his co-conspirators breached a Michigan company that paid 200 BTC (worth more than $1.1 million at the time). Two other attacks the prosecutors noted include a technology company in Wilsonville, Oregon, and a school in Texas.

“Vardanyan and his co-conspirators illegally accessed computer networks of victim companies and deployed ransomware on hundreds of compromised servers and workstations,” the U.S. Department of Justice says.

The DoJ says that Vardanyan and his co-conspirators received about 1,610 bitcoins in ransom payments, valued at around $15 million at the time.

The Ryuk ransomware operation was active from 2018 until mid-2020, carrying out high-profile attacks against organizations across nearly every sector, including healthcare providers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is estimated that at its peak, the Ryuk ransomware gang hacked around 20 organizations every week and made more than $150 million.

Following its shutdown in 2020, many of its members transitioned to the Conti ransomware operation, which quickly became one of the most prolific hacker groups.

Conti disbanded in 2022 after its internal chats and source code were leaked, with its members splintering into numerous cybercrime groups, some of which remain active today.

Vardanyan was indicted in February 2024 by a federal grand jury in Portland and is now scheduled to be sentenced in September 2026.

The ransomware operator faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison for two separate charges, as well as fines of $250,000 each.

As part of his plea agreement, Vardanyan has agreed to pay more than $1.1 million in restitution.

Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.

The Picus whitepaper shows how breach and attack simulation tests your SIEM and EDR rules so threats stop slipping by detection.

Get the whitepaper

Marshall built its reputation on guitar amplifiers used by everyone from rock legends to garage bands still waiting for the neighbors to appreciate the setlist. In recent years, however, the company has expanded well beyond the stage with portable Bluetooth speakers, party speakers, headphones, and its first soundbars, the Heston 120 and Heston 60.

That consumer audio push now continues with the Marshall Acton IV and Stanmore IV, the latest fourth-generation models in the company’s home Bluetooth speaker lineup.

Both speakers retain Marshall’s familiar guitar amplifier styling while adding upgraded tweeters, redesigned bass ports, Dynamic Loudness processing, Bluetooth 5.3 with Auracast and LC3 support, a revised brass control panel, a customizable M button, and more replaceable components.

The Acton IV and Stanmore IV will compete for attention with premium home speakers from Sonos, JBL, and Denon, although Marshall continues to place greater emphasis on Bluetooth connectivity, physical controls, analog inputs, and visual appeal than on a fully integrated Wi-Fi multi-room ecosystem.

Let’s take a closer look at what has changed.

Related Reviews:

Acton IV and Stanmore IV Shared Features and Upgrades

Brass Control Panel: Marshall’s familiar brass control panel returns with an improved media jog dial, its signature power switch, and tactile knobs for volume, bass, and treble. A new customizable M button provides instant access to personalized EQ settings or Spotify Tap.

Connectivity: Both speakers include RCA and 3.5 mm AUX inputs for physical sources such as CD players and turntables, although an external phono preamp may be required depending on the model. Wireless connectivity includes Bluetooth with LDAC support, along with Auracast through Marshall’s Heddon streaming hub.

Acoustic Design: Both speakers feature redesigned, downward-firing aerodynamic bass ports, allowing them to sit closer to a wall without significantly compromising bass performance. Upgraded tweeters are also intended to deliver a wider soundstage.

Dynamic Loudness: Marshall’s Dynamic Loudness processing automatically adjusts the tonal balance at different listening levels, helping the speakers maintain a fuller and more consistent sound at both low and high volumes.

Marshall App: Both speakers provide access to the Marshall App, which not only allows users to adjust EQ, but also provides a room calibration option to better optimize speaker sound in your space. 

Repairability: Both speakers are designed to support the replacement of selected external components, which should help extend their useful life rather than sending the entire speaker to the dumpster when one part fails.

Sustainability: The Acton IV and Stanmore IV incorporate FSC-certified wood and recycled materials as part of Marshall’s broader sustainability efforts.

Pro Tip: Although both speakers are compact enough to move from room to room, they require AC power and do not include built-in batteries. That is the reason Marshall classifies them as home speakers rather than portable models.

Marshall Acton IV vs. Stanmore IV: Key Differences

Although the Marshall Acton IV and Stanmore IV share many of the same features, their differences in size, bass extension, and maximum output may determine which model is better suited to your listening space.

Size and Weight: 

• The Acton IV is the more compact of the two, measuring 260 x 171 x 150 mm (10.24 x 6.73 x 5.91 inches) and weighing 2.65 kg (5.84 pounds). Its smaller footprint makes it better suited to bedrooms, kitchens, offices, and other modestly sized spaces.
• The larger Stanmore IV measures 350 x 203 x 185 mm (13.78 x 7.99 x 7.28 inches) and weighs 3.99 kg (8.79 pounds). That additional cabinet volume makes it the more appropriate choice for larger rooms or listeners who want greater scale and bass output.

Woofer Size: The Acton IV uses one 4-inch woofer and two 0.75-inch tweeters with waveguides. The Stanmore IV uses the same tweeter configuration but steps up to a larger 5-inch woofer.

Audio Performance: The Stanmore IV’s larger woofer and cabinet allow it to reach slightly deeper, with a claimed frequency response of 36 Hz to 38 kHz, compared with 37 Hz to 38 kHz for the Acton IV. It also reaches a higher maximum output of 97 dB SPL at one meter, versus 95 dB for the Acton IV. The Acton IV should be more than sufficient for smaller spaces, while the Stanmore IV is designed to deliver greater bass weight and room-filling output.

Comparison

The Bottom Line 

The Marshall Acton IV and Stanmore IV stand out by combining the company’s unmistakable guitar-amplifier styling with tactile controls, analog inputs, modern Bluetooth support, and a more repairable design. They are aimed at listeners who want a powered home speaker that looks like part of the room rather than another anonymous black box.

The smaller Acton IV is better suited to bedrooms, offices, and kitchens, while the Stanmore IV offers greater scale and bass output for larger spaces. Neither model includes HDMI ARC, USB audio, a phono stage, or a built-in battery, so buyers looking for TV integration, network streaming, or portable operation will need to look elsewhere. Another thing to keep in mind is that even though both speakers are compact, they require AC power to operate so there is no built-in battery system for portable “on-the-go” use. However, Marshall does offer the Killburn III, which is a great portable Bluetooth speaker option, both visually and audibly. 

Price & Availability

The Acton IV ($329) and Stanmore IV ($429) are available in Black or Cream on Marshall’s official website and select retailers.

Related Reading

Apple has sued OpenAI, accusing the company of stealing its trade secrets. 

In a complaint filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California on Friday, Apple alleges it “uncovered a pattern of theft of Apple’s trade secrets by OpenAI employees who were formerly at Apple.” 

Along with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Apple named two individuals in the suit: OpenAI’s Chief Hardware Officer Tang Tan, who previously worked at Apple for 24 years, and software engineer Chang Liu, who had worked at the company for 8 years before moving to OpenAI.

“At Apple, our teams are constantly developing breakthrough technologies to create the best products and services in the world, and protecting their work and intellectual property is something we take very seriously,” an Apple spokesperson said in a statement. “Recently, significant evidence has emerged suggesting individuals employed by OpenAI wrongfully took Apple’s secret and confidential information regarding our unreleased technologies, processes and products. We will always defend our teams’ hard work and innovations, and we are taking all appropriate steps to do so.”

Tech companies have been poaching top tech talent in a rapid-fire, billion-dollar hiring spree over the past few years as they race to develop advanced AI. But this is the first major lawsuit alleging that some of those job-hopping employees are illegally sharing their former employers’ secrets with their new bosses. 

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

OpenAI has reportedly been looking to push ahead in its hardware ambitions, with products like AI earbuds and a smartphone. The move could provide OpenAI with a significant source of revenue beyond its subscription tiers, particularly as it burns through investor money. It also has a partnership with Apple that involves integrating ChatGPT into Siri for responding to more complex queries; it’s not clear what’ll become of that collaboration following the suit. 

Former Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive’s company, io Products, merged with OpenAI in 2025. Ive is not mentioned by name in the filing, though Apple points to articles about OpenAI’s hardware goals and Ive’s involvement.  

OpenAI is no stranger to lawsuits. Publishers have accused the company of scraping copyrighted works to train large language models like ChatGPT. They also allege OpenAI withholds evidence about how it trains its AI models. The safety of its products has also been questioned. In just one of several similar suits, a mother sued OpenAI earlier this year, claiming interactions with its chatbot led to her daughter’s death.

This mounting scrutiny comes as OpenAI weighs plans to become a publicly traded company. It’s not yet clear when that could happen, but Apple’s suit could complicate those efforts — especially if it undermines OpenAI’s hardware goals.

The ‘tip of the iceberg’

In its filing, Apple said it “entrusted Mr. Tan with its most sensitive projects, trusted partner relationships, proprietary manufacturing techniques, and unreleased products” during his tenure as vice president of product design for iPhone and Apple Watch. 

“Apple’s investigation has revealed that Mr. Tan has been methodically using Apple’s confidential information to benefit OpenAI,” Apple alleged. 

That included emailing himself information about Apple’s suppliers before Tan left the company, according to the filing. He allegedly asked OpenAI applicants who currently worked at Apple about unannounced products during interviews, using the project codenames. Apple also alleges Tan told “job candidates still working for Apple to bring ‘actual parts’ from Apple to their interviews for ‘show and tell’ sessions in which he and his team at OpenAI can elicit still more Apple confidential information.”

In the complaint, Apple alleges Liu, who worked at Apple as a senior system electrical engineer, failed to return an Apple-issued work laptop. He then allegedly accessed Apple’s shared network folders and “surreptitiously accessed and downloaded dozens of Apple’s confidential hardware-related files, including voluminous, detailed information about unreleased products, engineering presentations, technical specifications and proprietary project data.” 

Apple called these instances “the tip of the iceberg” in the complaint, noting that it “lacks visibility into what’s been happening behind closed doors at OpenAI, where such misconduct is normalized and exemplified by leadership.” It alleged that “OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets.” 

“We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement. “We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s leadership style has been questioned before, causing the company’s board in 2023 to briefly fire him, saying he was misleading board members and investors. He was quickly returned to his role after employee backlash.

In February, when Apple’s investigation had just begun, the company says it wrote to OpenAI, voicing its concerns about improper access to Apple’s confidential information. It asked OpenAI about the precautions it was taking to avoid the issue and asked the company to investigate and correct the situation. Apple says OpenAI never responded. 

The goal of the suit is to stop OpenAI’s alleged theft of trade secrets, Apple notes. 

Apple has been broadening its AI partnerships, tapping into Google’s Gemini models to help power this year’s updates to Apple Intelligence and Siri. Meanwhile, reports suggest OpenAI may be considering legal action against Apple, alleging ChatGPT should have been more deeply integrated into Siri and other apps.

In what will be a blockbuster suit, Apple is suing OpenAI, alleging that two ex-employees, one of whom was Apple’s previous Vice President of Product Design for iPhone and Apple Watch, maintained an ongoing and successful effort in stealing intellectual property to enrich OpenAI’s development efforts.

In the suit, filed on Friday, Apple goes into some detail about what two named defendants, Chang Liu and previous Vice President of Product Design for iPhone and Apple Watch Tang Yew Tan have done to draw the company’s ire. Specifically, the suit claims that for months after leaving Apple, they stole and used Apple intellectual property to advance OpenAI’s goals.

And, OpenAI didn’t do anything about it, nor did they respond to Apple asking questions about the hires, the data, and what was being done with it.

Reportedly, Liu failed to return Apple-issued hardware, that was still authenticated to access Apple’s networks. Apple alleges that Liu told a colleague, Yu-Ting “Alyssa” Peng, still at Apple, that he was planning to access Apple information.

And in doing so, Liu exploited an authentication bug to access Apple’s shared network folders. He then bragged to his colleague that it was “so funny” that this bug existed.

Peng departed Apple in April, after pointing out to Liu that they should communicate over a different secure platform. Specifically, the pair used Line Messenger.

Ultimately, Peng was hired by OpenAI in April 2026. She is not being sued at the moment.

The filing goes on to claim that over weeks while developing hardware for OpenAI, Liu downloaded what the filing calls “dozens” of files. Specifically:

• Information about unreleased products
• Engineering presentations
• Technical specifications, specifically about multi-layer motherboards
• Proprietary project data.

Ex-Apple VP allegedly involved in the scheme as well

Apple’s internal investigations found out that Tan was doing the same after departing Apple, following a 24-year career.

The suit alleges that in the months before Tan left Apple to serve as OpenAI’s Chief Hardware Officer, he began emailing himself information about Apple suppliers. He also allegedly directed candidates to bring unreleased hardware components from Apple to their interviews with OpenAI to spill more information that’s more current than what Tan supplied himself.

Specifically, components that Tan wanted brought to interviews included batteries, shields, housings and back glass components in multiple colors, and more.

In those interviews, OpenAI is said to instruct new hires on how to avoid scrutiny when leaving Apple. Specifically, Tan has warned potential hires to not tell Apple that they are headed to OpenAI, and stay at Apple as long as they can before onboarding.

Apple says this, because they say that Tan has sent messages to Apple-issued work devices, and shared a stolen procedural document, detailing Apple’s security policies.

Suppliers providing services for Apple were fooled by Tan. The suit alleges that metal finishing techniques were exfiltrated from Apple, and provided to an unnamed manufacturing partner.

During investigation, Apple said that it reached out to OpenAI to discuss what precautions the AI firm was taking to combat the leak and use of information. OpenAI reportedly did not respond to the inquiry.

Review of Apple-issued hardware following employee departures also revealed that OpenAI hires took active actions to evade security. Specifics listed by the suit include failing to provide adequate notice, and failure to schedule exit processes and security reviews.

Apple’s attorneys say that departing employee actions “may help to conceal the misuse and misappropriation of confidential information.

While the suit claims that Apple “lacks visibility” on what’s going on, the allegations are detailed. Clearly, Apple is looking for discovery to further emphasize their points, and see how far the issue goes.

“Only OpenAI and Mr. Liu know all the ways they have been exploiting the trove of Apple confidential information he stole, and to the extent they have not concealed or destroyed the evidence of these misappropriations, it will be investigated thoroughly in discovery.”

Apple believes that this is all part of a concerted effort to take and use confidential information. The suit filing uses language we’ve seen before in other similar suits, discussing how, when, and why Apple is damaged by these thefts.

An Apple spokesperson went on the record about the suit.

“At Apple, our teams are constantly developing breakthrough technologies to create the best products and services in the world, and protecting their work and intellectual property is something we take very seriously. Recently, significant evidence has emerged suggesting individuals employed by OpenAI wrongfully took Apple’s secret and confidential information regarding our unreleased technologies, processes, and products. We will always defend our teams’ hard work and innovations, and we are taking all appropriate steps to do so.”

Apple is obviously seeking judgement, an injunction against use and possession of Apple intellectual property, a demand of a return of Apple’s property, damages, and royalties for use of Apple’s intellectual property.

The suit was filed in the US District Court, San Jose Division.