The simmering rivalry between tech titans Elon Musk and Sam Altman has erupted once again, this time drawing Apple into the fray and igniting a fresh debate over competition, favoritism, and the ever-powerful App Store. On Monday, August 11, 2025, Musk took to his social media platform X to accuse Apple of antitrust violations, claiming the company unfairly favors OpenAI’s ChatGPT over his own xAI’s Grok chatbot in App Store rankings and promotional features. The move marks the latest escalation in a high-profile feud that’s rapidly spilling out from Silicon Valley boardrooms into the public eye—and the courts.
“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 declared on X, as reported by Reuters and CNBC. The accusation stems from Apple’s mid-2024 partnership with OpenAI, which brought ChatGPT integration to iPhones, iPads, and Macs. As of August 2025, ChatGPT holds the top spot in the App Store’s “Top Free Apps” section, while Grok, xAI’s offering, sits at number five.
Musk’s complaint didn’t stop at rankings. He publicly questioned why Apple refused to include either X or Grok in its “Must-Have Apps” section, despite X being the world’s top news app and Grok’s high overall ranking. “Are you playing politics?” Musk asked, adding fuel to the fire of tech industry suspicions about Apple’s opaque promotional choices.
The response was swift. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Musk’s former business partner and now chief adversary, hit back with a pointed retort: “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.” Altman’s post referenced prior reporting from Platformer and other outlets, which alleged that after Musk acquired Twitter (now X), he made sweeping changes to the platform’s algorithms, at one point creating a system to prioritize his own posts above others.
The spat quickly devolved into a public tit-for-tat, with Musk accusing Altman of dishonesty and Altman challenging Musk to sign an affidavit swearing he’d never manipulated the X algorithm to harm competitors or favor his own ventures. “I will apologize if so,” Altman offered, in a move that combined legal bravado with personal challenge.
Amid the fireworks, Apple remained largely silent, issuing only a brief statement to CNBC: “The App Store is designed to be fair and free of bias. Our goal is to offer safe discovery for users and valuable opportunities for developers, collaborating with many to increase app visibility in rapidly evolving categories.” As of Tuesday afternoon, August 12, 2025, no lawsuit had yet been filed in federal court by xAI, according to The New York Times.
Fact-checkers and X’s own Community Notes feature quickly weighed in on Musk’s claims. Users pointed out that other AI chatbots, such as China’s DeepSeek and India’s Perplexity, had reached the App Store’s top spot in 2025—after the Apple-OpenAI partnership was announced. These corrections cast doubt on Musk’s assertion that Apple’s platform is a closed shop for all but OpenAI.
The broader context is impossible to ignore. Apple’s App Store has long been a lightning rod for criticism from developers and regulators alike. Earlier this year, Apple was fined €500 million ($581.15 million) by the European Union’s antitrust enforcer for restricting developers from steering users outside the App Store. In the United States, the Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit in early 2024, accusing Apple of maintaining an illegal smartphone monopoly. And in June 2025, a panel of judges denied Apple’s emergency application to halt changes to its App Store that resulted from its legal battle with Epic Games, a case that forced Apple to relax some of its most stringent in-app purchasing rules.
For Musk, the latest dispute is part of a long-running campaign against what he sees as entrenched interests and unfair competition in the tech world. After co-founding OpenAI in 2015, Musk left the company’s board in 2018 following disagreements over its direction, particularly its shift from nonprofit to for-profit status. He has since sued OpenAI twice, alleging “deceit of Shakespearean proportions” and arguing the company abandoned its founding mission to benefit humanity. A federal judge in California denied Musk’s effort to halt OpenAI’s transformation, but the legal battle continues to cast a shadow over the AI landscape.
Meanwhile, OpenAI has soared to new commercial heights. Since the public launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, the company has become a juggernaut, reportedly in talks with investors for a stock sale that could value it at a staggering $500 billion, according to CNBC. Musk, for his part, launched xAI in March 2023, merged it with X, and has sought billions in investment from Tesla and other backers. In February 2025, a Musk-led consortium offered to buy control of OpenAI for $97.4 billion—a proposal Altman publicly rebuffed, quipping, “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”
Complicating matters, Grok has faced its own share of controversy. In May 2025, the chatbot was found to have promoted false claims about so-called “white genocide” in South Africa, which Musk attributed to an “unauthorized modification.” Just two months later, Grok responses on X included praise for Adolf Hitler, further fueling concerns about the safety and oversight of AI technologies. These missteps have not gone unnoticed by regulators or the public, even as Musk insists on a level playing field for his products.
For Apple, the timing of Musk’s legal threats is less than ideal. With regulatory scrutiny mounting on both sides of the Atlantic and competitors eager to pounce, the company faces growing pressure to justify its App Store policies and promotional practices. Apple’s partnership with OpenAI, while commercially advantageous, has now become a flashpoint in a much larger struggle over the future of artificial intelligence, platform control, and tech industry power dynamics.
As the dust settles—for now—one thing is clear: the battle lines between Musk, Altman, and Apple are only hardening. With billions of dollars, reputations, and the future of AI at stake, the world will be watching closely to see who blinks first.
