{"id":488489,"date":"2026-03-22T00:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T00:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/488489\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T00:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T00:42:08","slug":"halide-co-founder-is-suing-sebastiaan-de-with-for-taking-code-to-apple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/488489\/","title":{"rendered":"Halide co-founder is suing Sebastiaan de With for taking code to Apple"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">Lux Optics co-founder Sebastiaan de With <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/tech\/869926\/apple-hires-sebastiaan-de-with-design-team-halide-lux\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">made headlines<\/a> when he joined Apple in late January. The company was behind <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/tech\/875919\/halide-mark-iii-process-zero-hands-on\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Halide<\/a>, one of the most popular photography apps for the iPhone, which gained a cult following for its robust pro-level controls.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">Apple was apparently a big enough fan that it <a href=\"https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/2026\/03\/21\/iphone-18-pro-camera-hardware-may-come-with-pro-software-apple-considered-buying-studio-behind-halide\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">tried to acquire<\/a> the developer last summer. Those talks never bore fruit, and eventually the company simply hired de With. At the time, it was widely believed that Apple had poached him from Lux. But new allegations from a lawsuit filed by co-founder Ben Sandofsky in the California Superior Court of Santa Cruz claim de With was fired for financial misconduct in December of 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theinformation.com\/articles\/apple-acquisition-talks-fraud-accusations-behind-one-app-startups-nasty-split\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Information<\/a>, the suit \u201caccuses de With of improperly using more than $150,000 in Lux corporate funds to pay for personal expenses,\u201d as well as \u201ctaking Lux source code and confidential material with him when he joined Apple.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">An attorney for de With denied those claims and said that \u201cThe attempt to insert Apple into this dispute appears designed to create leverage and attract attention.\u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lux Optics co-founder Sebastiaan de With made headlines when he joined Apple in late January. The company was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[304,226,84,59,50,227,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-488489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-apple","tag-apps","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-news","tag-tech","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}