WASHINGTON, Dec 5 (Reuters) – Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s social media platform X Corp has sued one of its former senior engineers for allegedly stealing proprietary source code to launch a competing business.
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Yue previously served as X’s principal software engineer on the company’s infrastructure optimization and performance team. Her LinkedIn profile shows she worked for the platform for more than a decade.
IOP Systems and X did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Yue could not be reached for comment.
X was formerly known as Twitter before Musk bought the platform in 2022 for $44 billion.
The lawsuit alleges that weeks after Musk’s acquisition, Yue took advantage of changes in management to “willfully and maliciously” copy millions of lines of confidential code and internal tools from her company laptop to external drives.
X fired Yue in late 2022 after she publicly questioned Musk’s new return-to-office policy at X and encouraged employees not to resign but instead to be fired, according to the lawsuit. X alleges Yue “orchestrated” her own ouster to raise her profile.
X claims the code Yue allegedly took with her was designed to optimize system performance and reduce operating costs — technology that the company says is central to competition.
The lawsuit alleges Yue used the code to form IOP Systems, which markets performance-monitoring software. X Corp alleges IOP’s offerings mirror the proprietary tools Yue helped develop while at X.
IOP’s website says its team “met while working for Twitter, where we saved the company over $100,000,000 over 5 years.”
X seeks a court order to prevent any further alleged use or disclosure of its trade secrets, and an order requiring the return of copied materials. The lawsuit also seeks unspecified monetary damages.
The case is X Corp v. Yao Yue et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 3:25-cv-10423.
For plaintiff: Jeanine Zalduendo and William Odom of Zweiback, Fiset & Zalduendo
For defendants: No appearances yet
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Reporting by Mike Scarcella
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