Sam Altman fires back at Elon Musk over OpenAI monopoly accusations

• Elon Musk claims that Apple’s App Store is biased against Grok
• Sam Altman responds, accusing Elon of manipulating X in Grok’s favor
• Apple has not responded to either claim

Elon Musk, CEO of XAI, the company behind the Grok AI chatbot, has accused Apple’s App Store of favoritism towards OpenAI in a tersely written post on X that threatens legal action over antitrust issues.

In the post, Musk writes, “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.”

Further posts from Musk clarify his grievances, including a post pinned to the top of his X.com account which reads, “Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either X or Grok in your ‘Must Have’ section when X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps? Are you playing politics? What gives? Inquiring minds want to know.”

Musk also gave examples of screenshots showing how Grok is not mentioned in the various roundups of AI apps found on the App Store, while competitors like Copilot and Google Gemini are mentioned.

Altman strikes back

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, was quick to clap back on X, 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.”

Altman links to an article on Platformer that alleges Musk created a team to modify the X algorithm to benefit his own tweets. This claim is based on a comparison between his Super Bowl tweet, which expressed support for the Philadelphia Eagles, and a similar one by then-President Joe Biden.

Apple’s legal issues with the App Store have already caused a very public spat with Fortnite developer Epic Games over the past few years. Much of the disagreement has centered on the fees that Apple charges apps for running on its platforms. Epic Games has recently won a court battle in Australia with the ruling that Apple and Google have engaged in anti-competitive conduct regarding the dominance of the app market. Epic has recently confirmed Fortnite will soon return to Apple devices in Australia.

Apple and OpenAI entered into an agreement in 2024, which saw Apple integrate ChatGPT into Apple Intelligence, allowing Siri to hand off to ChatGPT if a query proved too complex.

Musk’s grievance with Apple is more to do with the way the App Store promotes some apps over others. In another post on X, Musk says, “Apple is the gateway to the Internet for half of America. They are making it impossible for any other AI company to succeed by relentlessly promoting OpenAI in every way possible!”

However, as many people have pointed out on X, in January 2025, the DeepSeek app reached #1 overall on the App Store, and Perplexity reached #1 overall in India’s App Store. Both these occurred after the OpenAI and Apple partnership was announced in June 2024.

TechRadar has reached out to Apple for comment on this story and will update with any further information if the company responds.

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