Elon Musk vs Sam Altman: AI Founders Tangled in War of Words Over Claims of Favourism: 5 Things to Know

Elon Musk, the Founder of xAI, and Sam Altman, the Co-Founder and CEO of OpenAI, were involved in a battle of words on Monday. The incident began after Musk accused Apple of favouring the iOS app of ChatGPT by ranking it first in the App Store's various sections, while not mentioning X (formerly known as Twitter) or Grok in its "Must-Have" list and editorial sections. The Chief Technical Officer of X called this “an unequivocal antitrust violation,” and threatened to take legal action against the iPhone maker. This was just the beginning of yet another verbal showdown between the two tech leaders.

Elon Musk vs Sam Altman: Five Things to Know About the Latest Saga

1. Elon Musk accuses Apple: After alleging Apple of favouritism in the first post, Musk continued to make a series of posts raising more questions about the way the Cupertino-based tech giant handles the App Store. Responding to a user's post about the promotion of ChatGPT across the marketplace, the billionaire said, “Apple behaves like it's owned by OpenAI – why?”

After a user highlighted the deal between Apple and OpenAI that led to the latter's chatbot being integrated within Apple Intelligence, Musk responded in another post, accusing the tech giant of “making it impossible for any other AI company to succeed.”

Later in the day, the xAI Founder also claimed that Apple was not only favouring OpenAI, but it was also going out of its way to keep X and Grok apps from its editorial rankings. He said, “Why are the Grok and the 𝕏 app excluded from every list, except those measuring raw downloads, but ChatGPT is on every list? This is messed up!”

Musk, who announced the political party dubbed The America Party in July, also did not shy away from taking a political dig at the iPhone maker. Accusing Apple of not adding X or Grok into the “Must-Have” section of the App Store, he questioned whether the tech giant was playing politics.

2. Sam Altman hits back: OpenAI CEO Altman usually refrains from engaging in a verbal battle on X. However, this time he was quick to respond to Musk, not to defend ChatGPT, but to accuse the billionaire.

“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,” he said. Notably, he was referring to the claims made by Platformer that Musk asked X designers to tweak the algorithm to ensure his posts always receive high engagement. These claims have not been proven.

Musk also responded to Altman and said, “You got 3M views on your bullshit post, you liar, far more than I've received on many of mine, despite me having 50 times your follower count!”

3. Community Notes flag Musk's original accusation as inaccurate: Community Notes, the crowd-sourced fact-checking system rebranded by Musk, added fuel to the fire. One of the contributors shared several links to highlight that DeepSeek reached the number one spot on the App Store in January 2025, and Perplexity achieved the same feat on July 18.

The note also highlighted that both incidents occurred after the collaboration between OpenAI and Apple began. The note has received enough positive votes that it now displays underneath Musk's post.

4. The OpenAI-Apple Deal: At Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2024, the two companies announced a partnership that would see ChatGPT be integrated into Apple Intelligence. With this, iPhone, MacBook, iPad, and later Vision Pro users could connect to the OpenAI chatbot seamlessly to get a response to a query.

ChatGPT was integrated within the tech giant's Writing Tools, Siri, and Visual Intelligence, powering important aspects of the features. Apple also allowed users with a subscription to ChatGPT to connect their accounts while using these devices.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman had reported that neither party was paying the other for this collaboration and that revenue generation was not the aim of the partnership. Instead, the deal was reportedly helping Apple sell more devices due to ChatGPT's presence, while OpenAI benefits from exposure to Apple device owners. Any information about App Store promotion was not disclosed, although nothing denies its possibility either.

5. Elon Musk vs Sam Altman is an Old Rivalry: This is not the first squabble between the two tech veterans. The billionaire first spoke against OpenAI in November 2022, days after the launch of ChatGPT, accusing the company of stealing data from X to train its AI models.

Musk continued with verbal assault throughout 2023, calling out OpenAI for becoming a “closed-source, maximum-profit company.” He also questioned the legality behind a non-profit company restructuring itself to create a for-profit division. In 2024, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for the same. The ChatGPT maker continues to defend its position and has also made changes to the company to highlight that the non-profit part controls and caps the for-profit entity.

According to a Reuters report, Musk plans to continue with the lawsuit. A jury trial for the case has been scheduled for March 2026.