In the summer of 2025, Apple held discussions to acquire Lux Optics, the developer behind the popular iPhone camera apps Halide, Kino, and Spectre. Those conversations never resulted in a purchase. What came instead was messier: a lawsuit that has now exposed the inner workings of one of the tech world's most competitive acquisitions.
Lux CEO and co-founder Ben Sandofsky fired de With in December over financial misconduct, and de With announced that he had joined Apple's design team in January. This January move by Sebastiaan de With appeared straightforward at the time. But last week, Sandofsky filed a lawsuit that tells a more complicated story.
Sandofsky has filed a lawsuit in the California Superior Court of Santa Cruz against de With, accusing him of improperly using more than $150,000 in Lux company funds to pay for personal expenses since 2022, as well as providing confidential material and source code from Lux to Apple. The allegations centre on whether de With brought proprietary information with him when he switched companies.
Apple apparently wanted to acquire Lux to bolster the built-in Camera app, which is said to be "top priority for the company right now." The iPhone 18 Pro will "match professional-grade cameras in terms of certain advanced features," necessitating an upgrade of the built-in Camera app. Lux Optics built a reputation with Halide by offering manual controls, deeper exposure settings, and tools that go beyond what Apple currently provides in its default app.
When the acquisition talks stalled in September, the two founders made a joint decision to walk away. The company concluded that it could get a better offer from Apple in the future following updates to the app. Two months later, everything came apart.
De With's legal representatives say that the lawsuit is meritless and deny that he "used, transferred, or disclosed any Lux intellectual property" as part of his new job at Apple. They added that the lawsuit was only filed after de With raised concerns with Sandofsky about financial irregularities at Lux and had requested access to its financial records and payments, suggesting that it was a "retaliatory response to those efforts and an attempt to avoid scrutiny of that conduct."
This framing presents a starkly different narrative from the one Sandofsky is advancing. One side sees a departing executive who pilfered company resources and intellectual property. The other sees a co-founder seeking transparency and being punished for it.
Apple is not named as a defendant in the case and it is not accused of any wrongdoing. The company remains blameless in the legal dispute, though it hired de With after the acquisition talks collapsed. The outcome will turn on whether a judge believes de With misappropriated funds and whether any confidential material actually made its way to Apple's design team.