Elon Musk’s xAI sues Apple and OpenAI over alleged collusion

Elon Musk is taking his grudge match against Sam Altman straight to federal court, and this time, he’s dragging Apple into the crossfire.

On Monday, Musk’s X and his AI venture, xAI, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI, alleging the tech giants are actively colluding to smother competition in the artificial intelligence market.

An unfair monopoly on the App Store?

The lawsuit pulls zero punches. According to court filings, Apple teamed up with OpenAI in a desperate attempt to protect its smartphone monopoly, handing exclusive access to a chatbot that already dominates the space.

Musk didn’t mince words on X earlier this month either. He claimed the platform's setup makes it flat-out impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to ever hit number one on the App Store.

The target here is the landmark deal Apple announced last June. That partnership integrates ChatGPT directly into Apple's operating systems, with the first wave of features expected to drop this December.

From xAI’s perspective, baking ChatGPT into billions of iPhones as the default assistant isn't just a partnership; it’s an exclusionary alliance that locks every other frontier model out of the world’s most lucrative distribution channel.

The grudge reaches a boiling point

This legal brawl is just the latest chapter in an increasingly bitter saga between Musk and Altman.

Musk, who co-founded OpenAI before walking away, has already sued to stop the company from transitioning into a fully for-profit entity.

He also tried to buy OpenAI outright with an unsolicited $97.4 billion takeover offer, an ambitious move that OpenAI flatly rejected.

Now, the battle has shifted from boardroom coups and social media jabs to the legal validity of big-tech distribution pacts. So far, neither Apple nor OpenAI has responded to requests for comment.

Why it matters

Musk's suit might look like personal theater, but it cuts straight to the single biggest bottleneck facing modern AI: distribution.

Building an elite foundational model is no longer enough. If Apple locks down system-level access and gives it exclusively to one vendor, alternatives like xAI’s Grok or Anthropic's Claude are essentially relegated to second-class citizens trapped inside standalone app containers.

Strategically, we think Musk is playing a clever hand by targeting Apple's App Store leverage. Regulators worldwide are already scrutinizing Apple’s ecosystem dominance; tying that existing antitrust heat to OpenAI's market lead puts both companies on the defensive.

At the same time, this lawsuit highlights xAI’s vulnerability. Without its own mobile hardware or desktop operating system, Musk’s AI ambitions remain entirely dependent on distribution rails owned by rivals who have very little incentive to play fair.