Elon Musk’s xAI sues Apple and OpenAI in expanding fight over competition

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI sued Apple and ChatGPT maker OpenAI on Monday, alleging the two companies were colluding to disadvantage his AI venture and escalating his legal war against rivals over the technology.

Musk’s company alleged that Apple was using its App Store to suppress the distribution of its Grok chatbot, which is offered as a stand-alone app and also integrated into his social network X. The suit alleged Apple did so to help OpenAI, with which Apple is partnering on AI technology. xAI is claiming billions of dollars in damages.

“Working in tandem, defendants Apple and OpenAI have locked up markets to maintain their monopolies and prevent innovators like X and xAI from competing,” lawyers for xAI wrote in a complaint filed Monday with the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Musk merged xAI and his social media platform X earlier this year.

Musk has frequently sued his business competitors. The lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI follows the billionaire’s year-long legal campaign to block OpenAI from restructuring from a nonprofit with a commercial division into a for-profit business. In May, OpenAI reformulated its plan to keep its official status as a nonprofit while giving its commercial wing more freedom, but Musk has continued his lawsuit.

Musk is an OpenAI co-founder but has taken umbrage with the company’s turn to a for-profit direction, growing vocal about the matter after the ChatGPT maker emerged as the front-runner in the race to develop AI-based chatbots.

Spokespeople from Apple and a lawyer for Musk did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for OpenAI said that “this latest filing is consistent with Mr Musk’s ongoing pattern of harassment.” The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.

Apple and OpenAI signed a deal to work on AI technology in June after the iPhone maker struggled to keep pace with other tech giants in developing its own in-house AI offerings. But the company has said the deal is not exclusive. Bloomberg News reported last week that Apple is in talks to also add Google’s AI to its software on the iPhone and other devices.

As of Monday afternoon, ChatGPT was ranked as the No 1 free app in both Apple’s iOS App Store and the Google Play store, which serves Android-based devices. Grok ranked 26th among free apps on the iOS App Store, far below ChatGPT but higher than applications such as X, Facebook, DoorDash and Spotify. Grok ranked 47th among free apps in the Google Play store. Google parent Alphabet is not subject to X’s lawsuit.

According to the firm Sensor Tower, which provides estimates on app downloads and popularity, Grok is one of only three AI chatbot apps that have claimed the top spot on the U.S. Apple App Store’s rankings for free apps since 2024; the others are ChatGPT and Chinese chatbot DeepSeek.

Grok has also hit the top of Google Play’s US charts for free apps. But both of Grok’s ascents to the peak of the rankings came in a brief period earlier this year, following the chatbot’s initial release on those platforms.

ChatGPT, by contrast, has recorded lasting popularity. OpenAI’s app has surpassed 1.1 billion combined downloads between Apple and Google’s app stores, according to Sensor Tower’s estimates, more than 660 million of which have come just this year. Grok, by contrast, has been downloaded about 62 million times, the firm said.

Last month, xAI temporarily paused some functions of Grok after it began to make antisemitic posts on X, an issue the company said was unintended and later fixed.

WASHINGTON POST