Elon Musk's startup xAI has accused Apple and OpenAI of monopoly collusion

Elon Musk's AI startup xAI has sued Apple and OpenAI, accusing the companies of anti-competitive practices. Elon Musk's AI startup claims that Apple is giving the ChatGPT app an advantage in App Store searches. OpenAI believes Musk is continuing his campaign to pressure the ChatGPT developer he once helped create.

On Monday, xAI, which develops the Grok chatbot, filed a lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI, CNBC reported. The developer of the Grok chatbot accused the companies of conspiring to monopolize the smartphone and generative AI markets. xAI is owned by techno-billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk; he founded it in 2023. The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

The lawsuit alleges that Apple is under-ranking so-called super apps and competing generative chatbots like xAI's Grok in the App Store search engine, with the iPhone maker allegedly favoring OpenAI and integrating its ChatGPT chatbot into its products.

"In a desperate attempt to protect its monopoly in the smartphone market, Apple has teamed up with the company that has the most to gain from stifling competition and innovation in AI - OpenAI, a monopolist in the generative chatbot market," reads the complaint, cited by CNBC. - Unless the court enjoins Apple's and OpenAI's unlawful conduct, the defendants will continue to impede competition."

Back on August 11, Musk threatened legal action against the companies, saying that he believes Apple favors OpenAI's ChatGPT over competing systems. "Apple didn't just put its finger on the scale - it threw its entire body on it," Musk wrote in a post on social media X.

No evidence of monopoly collusion has yet been publicly presented by xAI. The company did not respond to Barron's and CNBC's requests for comment.

"This new lawsuit is consistent with the ongoing pattern of harassment by Mr. Musk," an OpenAI spokesperson said in Barron's letter.

"This is a startling claim, given what I've heard about how Elon Musk manipulates X to his own advantage to benefit himself and his companies, as well as to harm competitors and people he doesn't like," CNBC quoted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's response to Musk's threats on Aug. 11.

"The App Store is designed to be a fair and impartial platform," Apple's press office responded to Barron's on Aug. 12.

Musk's new lawsuit is a twist in the ongoing standoff between Musk and Altman, CNBC writes. Musk co-founded OpenAI with Altman in 2015, but left the startup in 2018 due to disagreements over the project's development. Last year, Musk sued OpenAI and Altman, accusing them of breach of contract as they, according to him, put commercial interests above the original mission - to develop AI "for the benefit of all mankind."

In the countersuit, OpenAI alleges that Musk and xAI engaged in "harassment" through lawsuits, social media and press attacks, and a "sham attempt" to buy developer ChatGPT for $97.4 billion, which OpenAI believes was intended to undermine its business ties.

Apple has partnered with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into iPhones, iPads, and Mac laptops and desktops in 2024. OpenAI's new AI model, GPT-5, will become part of Apple Intelligence with the release of the new iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and macOS Tahoe 26 operating systems in September, Apple told the 9to5Mac website. There will likely be several ways for iPhone and Mac users to access GPT-5. The most obvious one is to ask Siri a difficult question that the voice assistant can't handle on its own, Techradar writes. The publication suggests that GPT-5 may also be integrated into Apple's Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence feature, which uses the iPhone's camera to identify objects in the user's field of view.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported in May that Apple could also provide access to other chatbots via Siri's voice assistant: Google's Gemini, for example. In China, the company was in talks to connect Siri to Alibaba Group's AI.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor