Musk


Elon Musk has escalated his feud with OpenAI, this time taking aim at Apple’s App Store. The billionaire accused the tech giant of giving preferential treatment to ChatGPT and vowed to take legal action.

“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,” Musk wrote Monday on X, his social media platform, without offering evidence. “xAI will take immediate legal action,” he added, referencing his own artificial intelligence company.

Several X users pushed back, noting that Chinese startup DeepSeek AI topped the App Store charts earlier this year, while Perplexity AI recently reached the number-one spot in India. Both companies compete with OpenAI and Musk’s xAI.

OpenAI and xAI each released updated versions of their AI assistants  ChatGPT and Grok — in the past week. As of Tuesday, ChatGPT was ranked first among free iPhone apps, while Grok stood in fifth place. Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

App Store rankings are influenced by factors such as user engagement, reviews, and download numbers.

Apple–OpenAI Partnership

In June 2024, Apple and OpenAI announced a partnership to integrate ChatGPT into iPhones and other Apple devices. Last week, OpenAI said ChatGPT-5 is now available for free to nearly 700 million weekly users.

Musk vs. OpenAI

Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but left the company in 2018. Since then, he has accused the startup of abandoning its founding mission. He sued OpenAI last year, claiming it had shifted from a non-profit, open research model to a profit-driven one aligned with Microsoft.

OpenAI countersued in April 2024, alleging Musk had embarked on a “relentless campaign” to harm the company after it achieved major breakthroughs without him. Court filings in California claimed Musk’s real goal was to build a direct competitor — xAI — to seize the technological lead “not for humanity but for Elon Musk.”

Musk launched xAI in 2023 to compete with OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and other major AI players.

Meanwhile, DeepSeek’s entry into the market earlier this year challenged industry leaders by offering high-performance AI models that run on less costly chips.