Elon Musk is threatening to drag Apple into court, accusing the tech giant of rigging its App Store to favor OpenAI’s ChatGPT over his own AI chatbot, Grok.
In a flurry of posts on X, Musk claimed Apple is making it “impossible for any AI company besides Open AI to reach #1 in the App Store,” calling the practice an “unequivocal antitrust violation.”
Musk added that his AI startup, xAI, will take “immediate legal action” unless Apple changes course.
Apple has so far declined to comment on Musk’s allegations.
The Grok vs ChatGPT battle
Musk’s frustration centers on Grok’s exclusion from Apple’s “Must-Have” section, even though Grok is ranked fifth among all free apps in the U.S. App Store. His social media platform X, which he claims is the “#1 news app in the world,” is also missing from the “Must-Have” list.
Meanwhile, OpenAI’s ChatGPT sits at No. 1 in the free app rankings and enjoys prime placement in the “Must-Have” section. Apple is also prominently promoting ChatGPT-5, OpenAI’s newest AI model, at the top of its “Apps” page.
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“Are you playing politics?” Musk asked in one X post.
Musk’s legal threat comes shortly after Grok leapfrogged Google’s AI app in Apple’s App Store rankings following the launch of its new Grok 4 chatbot last month.
The news also follows the recent departure of xAI legal head Robert Keele, who announced last week that he had left the company to spend more time with family. Keele also acknowledged there was “daylight between our worldviews,” adding that Musk’s “vision, commitment, and smarts blew me away on the daily.”
Musk’s longstanding feud with OpenAI
Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but left its board in 2018. He has become one of its most vocal critics since then, suing the Microsoft-backed company and its CEO Sam Altman for allegedly abandoning its non-profit mission for developing AI “for the benefit of humanity broadly.”
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Musk had previously warned Apple not to integrate Open AI’s technology at the operating system level, threatening to ban Apple devices from his companies if it did.
While Apple has remained silent on the matter, Altman responded in his own X post, stating: “This is a remarkable claim given what I have heard alleged that Elon does to manipulate X to benefit himself and his own companies and harm his competitors and people he doesn’t like.”
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Continued antitrust scrutiny for Apple
Apple is no stranger to antitrust challenges.
The U.S. Department of Justice sued the company in 2024 for maintaining an alleged iPhone ecosystem monopoly. In 2021, courts forced Apple to loosen App Store payment restrictions in a major win for gaming companies after a judge maintained its fees were anticompetitive.
If Musk follows through with his latest legal threat, his lawsuit could become another high-profile test of Apple’s control over app distribution and promotion — this time in the booming AI industry.
Whether Musk is simply posturing or preparing for an “immediate” legal blitz, the fight could set a new precedent for how app stores handle AI competition.
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