Elon Musk Sues Apple and OpenAI Over Alleged App Store Conspiracy Against X and Grok

Elon Musk's xAI startup today filed a Texas lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI, accusing the two companies of conspiring to "ensure their continued dominance" in the AI market.

Earlier this month, Musk threatened to sue Apple and OpenAI because his apps X and Grok have not been featured in the App Store's "Must Have" apps section, and he has now followed through with that threat.

The lawsuit suggests that Apple was "blindsided by major innovations in AI," leading it to team up with OpenAI "in a desperate bid to protect its smartphone monopoly." xAI points to the integrated ChatGPT feature for Siri, because ‌Siri‌'s ability to reference a chatbot is exclusive to OpenAI as of now.

xAI claims that if iPhone users want to access a generative AI chatbot, "they have no choice but to use ChatGPT, even if they would prefer to use more innovative and imaginative products like xAI's Grok." xAI says that while iPhone users can download any chatbot app on their devices, it would not have the same level of "functionality, usability, and integration" as ChatGPT does with ‌Siri‌. There is also clear evidence that Apple is working to integrate other chatbots like Gemini into ‌Siri‌, including a statement from Google CEO Sundar Pichai about talks on that very subject.

The lawsuit states that Apple has been "deprioritizing" the apps of competing generative AI chatbots and apps like X in the ‌App Store‌ and delaying ‌App Store‌ updates, plus it complains that xAI has not been able to get data from billions of iPhone users for training Grok because it is not integrated with ‌Siri‌ like ChatGPT. xAI blames Apple and OpenAI for its failure to "attain more than a few percent of the generative AI chatbot market."

Despite their high rankings in the subject-matter-based "Top Apps" lists, neither the X app nor the Grok app appeared in the "Must-Have Apps" section of the App Store on August 24, 2025. Instead, as reflected in Figure 5 below, the first 11 listed apps in the "Must-Have Apps" section on August 24, 2025 do not include the X app or the Grok app. Neither the X app nor the Grok app appears further down on the list, either. This is also true of other generative AI chatbot and super app competitors.

xAI asks that the court put a stop to Apple and OpenAI's "anticompetitive scheme" and that the two companies be forced to pay damages.

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