xAI has accused Apple and OpenAI of conspiring to monopolise the smartphone and AI chatbot market.
Musk had claimed that Grok deserved to be featured in the App Store’s “Must-Have” apps list
Photo Credit: Reuters
xAI, the Elon Musk-led artificial intelligence (AI) startup, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Apple on Monday. The legal complaint has been registered in a US federal court in Texas, and alleges the two companies of anticompetitive conduct and conspiracy to monopolise the market for smartphones and generative AI chatbots. The lawsuit comes just two weeks after Musk made several posts on his social media platform accusing Apple of artificially ranking ChatGPT high on its App Store charts.
The 61-page lawsuit (via CNN), filed with the US District Court of Texas, names xAI and X (formerly known as Twitter) as plaintiffs and seeks a jury trial, accusing the Apple and OpenAI of having “locked up markets to maintain their monopolies and prevent innovators like X and xAI from competing.” xAI said in the complaint that it wants Apple to stop its anticompetitive conduct, and is seeking “billions in damages.”
Explaining the core allegation, the lawsuit claims that the Apple-OpenAI deal, which was announced in 2024, allows ChatGPT to be the only “generative AI chatbot with a first-party integration into Apple's smartphones.” xAI claims that this arrangement acts as a deterrent for users to download and install a different AI chatbot.
Bringing the loss of opportunity for other AI companies, it adds that Apple's deal ensures that other AI chatbots miss out on user prompts “they would be able to access were they given the ability to integrate with iOS like ChatGPT.”
Further, it alleges, “ChatGPT is advantaged even as to users who do download generative AI chatbots through the App Store because Apple's integration with ChatGPT amounts to an endorsement and award of default status.”
The lawsuit follows Musk's series of posts on X earlier this month, where the billionaire called out the iPhone maker for favouring ChatGPT by ranking it high in the App Store's various charts, while not mentioning Grok. He also accused Apple of mentioning OpenAI's chatbot in “every editorial section.” At the time, Musk also threatened to take legal action against both companies.
Notably, this is only the first time Musk has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI. In 2024, he sued the AI firm for restructuring itself to create a for-profit division in the non-profit company. A jury trial for the case is reportedly scheduled for March 2026.
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