Elon Musk goes to war with Apple over alleged App Store bias favoring OpenAI’s ChatGPT, X users push back

Elon Musk is taking his feud with Apple to a new front — the courtroom. On Monday, the billionaire threatened legal action against the tech giant, accusing it of favoring OpenAI’s ChatGPT and sidelining his own Grok chatbot in the App Store rankings.

“Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation. xAI will take immediate legal action,” Musk posted on X. He followed it up with another jab: “Why do you refuse 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? Are you playing politics?”

In another post, Musk claimed Grok’s omission from Apple’s AI section was glaring. “Grok is the smartest AI in the world on the toughest tests and just came first by far in coding, but is not mentioned at all under ‘AI’ by Apple!” he wrote.

X Users Dispute Musk’s Claims, Citing Other AI Apps That Hit No. 1 Post Apple–OpenAI Deal

Musk’s accusation set off a storm on X, with many questioning his narrative. But X users aren’t buying it, pointing out that in January 2025, DeepSeek hit the No. 1 spot overall on the App Store — and on July 18, 2025, Perplexity topped India’s charts. Both happened well after Apple and OpenAI announced their partnership on June 10, 2024.

“In January 2025, DeepSeek reached #1 overall on the App Store. And just one month ago, on July 18, 2025, Perplexity also reached #1 overall in India’s App Store. Both of these occurred after the OpenAI–Apple partnership announced on June 10, 2024,” X Community Notes added.

Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation.

xAI will take immediate legal action.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2025

Apple declined to comment on the accusations.

Musk’s anger has been simmering since last year, when Apple struck a deal with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. At the time, he threatened to ban Apple devices at his companies if the integration happened at the operating system level, calling it “an unacceptable security violation.”

The timing of his legal threat is striking. Just weeks ago, Grok climbed to the No. 5 spot among all free apps on the App Store, surpassing Google’s entry in the AI race. Yet, CNBC confirmed that ChatGPT holds the No. 1 spot — and is the only AI chatbot featured in Apple’s “Must-Have Apps” list. The App Store even highlights OpenAI’s newly released GPT-5 at the top of its “Apps” section.

OpenAI announced GPT-5 last Thursday, touting it as its most advanced AI model to date. That launch came on the heels of xAI’s release of Grok 4, the latest version of Musk’s chatbot.

The two companies’ rivalry runs deep. Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but left its board in 2018. He’s now suing the Microsoft-backed startup and CEO Sam Altman, alleging they abandoned OpenAI’s original mission to develop AI “for the benefit of humanity broadly.”

The back-and-forth has drawn in other tech leaders. In response to Musk’s accusations against Apple, Altman fired back on X: “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.”

Musk’s legal threat comes at a time when Apple is already facing antitrust scrutiny. The U.S. Department of Justice sued the company last year, accusing it of running an iPhone monopoly. And in June, a panel of judges rejected Apple’s attempt to pause App Store changes stemming from another court ruling that barred the company from charging commissions on in-app payment links or dictating their design.

For Musk, the fight over the App Store is shaping up to be another high-profile battle in a long list of corporate grudge matches — one that now pits his AI ambitions directly against both Cupertino and his former allies at OpenAI.