Elon Musk has threatened to take legal action against Apple, accusing the tech giant of breaking antitrust rules by favouring OpenAI’s ChatGPT over his AI assistant, Grok, in App Store rankings.
On August 12, 2025, Tesla CEO posted on X (formerly Twitter), “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.
He vowed that his AI startup, “xAI will take immediate legal action.”
However, there is no concrete evidence to support his accusations.
According to App Store instructions, ranking of an application is determined by a complex algorithm that focuses on factors such as keyword relevance, download numbers, user ratings, reviews, app performance, and retention rates.
Noting this, critics pointed out that another chatbot, DeepSeek had previously topped the App Store charts in January. This trend was seen months after Apple announced its partnership with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into Siri.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sarcastically responded to Elon’s allegation stating, “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.”
The exchange of tweets reignited the long-standing rivalry between the two tech leaders who co-founded OpenAI together before Musk departed in 2018.
As of now, Saltman’s ChatGPT ranks as no.1 among free apps on the App Store while Grok ranks 6th. However, Google Gemini sits far behind at 57th.
In addition to rankings, Musk also criticized Apple for excluding X (formerly Twitter) and Grok from the App Store’s “Must Have” recommendations.
Legal experts suggest that due to these allegations Musk may face hurdles unless he presents concrete evidence of anti-competitive behavior.
