Elon Musk is (once again) going after Apple, this time accusing the company of an “unequivocal antitrust violation” for allegedly favoring OpenAI in the App Store’s AI rankings. Here are the details.
A bit of context
Last month, xAI released Grok 4, its latest large language model, promising major performance gains over leading competitors. Since then, the company has also rolled out features like Grok Imagine, its image and video generator, as well as customizable “companion” chatbots.
During the same time period, according to data from App Figures, the Grok app climbed from around 60th to 29th place in the overall App Store rankings last week.
Earlier today, xAI made Grok 4 free for users worldwide, helping the app climb further to fifth place in the overall App Store rankings, and second in the Productivity category.
Still, that hasn’t been enough to dethrone OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has spent the better part of the past year hovering at, or near, the top of Apple’s charts.
For the past year, Apple has also repeatedly featured ChatGPT in its App Store editorial content. More significantly, it partnered with OpenAI as part of its new Apple Intelligence rollout, which includes direct Siri integration and support for the Writing Tools feature.
But what about the lawsuit?
Earlier tonight, Elon Musk posted the following on X:
It’s unclear what exactly triggered his threat of legal action, but if history is any guide, he’ll likely post more about it as his supporters egg him on. So his reasoning behind the move may become more apparent as the hours and days progress.
Musk, of course, co-founded OpenAI before parting ways with the organization early on. More recently, he sued the company in an effort to block its transition to a for-profit model, a case still making its way through the courts.
At the same time, he’s also been competing directly with OpenAI with xAI. So it’s possible his latest grievance with the App Store is just an extension of that broader fight, and that he sees Apple’s platform as playing a key and anticompetitive role in OpenAI’s continued success.
Be that as it may, Musk has a history of threatening legal action without always following through, so whether tonight’s post amounts to anything remains to be seen. For now, we’ll have to wait and see if he offers more context, or if xAI actually moves forward with a lawsuit in the coming days.
Do you think Apple is giving OpenAI an unfair advantage on the App Store? Let us know in the comments.
Update 10:25 p.m. ET: A few hours before the lawsuit threat, Musk had published this post in which he asked Apple why it “refuse(d) to put either 𝕏 or Grok in your ‘Must Have’ section when 𝕏 is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps.” His post quoted a Tesla fan account, claiming that “the people” had spoken, and that X was the top news app in the U.S.
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