Apple accuses ex-engineer of stealing Vision Pro secrets, wipes work laptop, takes job at Snap

Apple has accused an ex-engineer of stealing company secrets for its Vision Pro headset, silently accepting a job at competitor Snap, and deleting evidence by wiping data from his work laptop.

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Apple filed a lawsuit on June 24, 2025, in Santa Clara County against one of its ex-staffers, who reportedly transferred confidential files to his personal cloud account in his last days with the company. SiliconValley.com has the report, where ex-Apple engineer Di Liu allegedly violating Apple intellectual property, stealing some of the secret sauce for Apple's Vision Pro headset.

Liu worked at Apple for 7 years before moving to another company -- Snap -- serving in a position of a senior product design engineer, where he had access to the technology used inside of Apple's Vision Pro headset, and its upcoming headsets in the years to come.

The lawsuit continues, claiming that Liu intentionally didn't inform Apple that he accepted a position at Snap, which is a competitor to Apple in the AR/MR headset business. Instead, he said his reason for leaving Apple was personal, and that he wanted to spend more quality time with his family. The information was withheld from Apple in order to avoid the protocol that occurs when leaving the company, something that includes having your access removed to Apple's internal systems.

Apple presents that a huge volume of confidential information regarding its headsets was accessed, and then copied from the company-issued MacBook laptop that Liu held. This information included Apple's design for the Vision Pro, hardware testing, and even new technologies and features that the company hasn't introduced yet, and will be coming to future revisions of the headsets (more on Apple's future Vision Pro and Vision Air headsets in the links below).

Liu reportedly even went as far as wiping the files from his laptop so that no one could trace his steps, but the discovery was made after a forensic analysis on his MacBook, which is when Apple found out what happened. Apple is now seeking the immediate return of its trade secrets for the Vision Pro that was stolen, as well as an unspecified amount of financial damages.

Apple is urging that the court have Liu hand over his personal devices and cloud accounts to better understand the extent of his stealing and crimes.