Elon Musk goes to war with Apple over AI
The billionaire owner of xAI said the company will ‘take immediate legal action’ against the tech giant over its relationship with ChatGPT maker OpenAI
, Technology Business Editor
Tuesday August 12 2025, 12.18pm BST, The Times
Elon Musk has threatened legal action against Apple
PATRICK PLEUL/POOL VIA REUTERS
Elon Musk has threatened to sue Apple over claims it gives his former company, OpenAI, preferential treatment on its app store.
The billionaire owner of OpenAI’s rival, xAI, said his company “would take immediate legal action” against Apple, alleging that it “makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation”. Apple was contacted for comment.
The allegation has once again drawn Musk into a bitter war of words with Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI and his former friend and colleague. Musk has an acrimonious history with the company he co-founded in 2015 and left in late February 2018.
The two executives were friends and colleagues
PATRICK T FALLON/ALLISON ROBBERT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Altman responded to Musk’s accusation about OpenAI’s relationship with Apple: “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”.
Musk shot back: “You got 3M views on your bullshit post, you liar, far more than I’ve received on many of mine, despite me having 50 times your follower count!”, a reference to the suggestion by Altman that Musk uses the social media platform which he owns for his personal gain.
Apple, one of the world’s most valuable companies, and OpenAI made an agreement last year to integrate ChatGPT into its operating system and the framework of its generative AI system known as Apple Intelligence.
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At the time of writing, OpenAI’s ChatGPT was the most downloaded free iPhone app in the UK, ahead of Musk’s Grok and Proton’s virtual private network.
Musk is no stranger to lawsuits. He has tried to sue OpenAI on several occasions over its corporate structure and mission. Last year, OpenAI published a cache of emails with Musk to try to disprove a lawsuit claiming that the organisation had departed from its original promise to help humanity and that it was instead “driven by commercial considerations”. There has been an increasingly bitter dispute between the two sides, with Musk even trying to buy OpenAI earlier this year, an offer that was swiftly rejected.
Apple made an agreement with OpenAI last year to integrate ChatGPT into its operating system
Despite its rather obscure name, ChatGPT has huge brand recognition with the public, has become synonymous with AI chatbots and as a result is widely used. It was the first major generative AI chatbot to launch into public hands and it has capitalised on that.
According to data from Sensor Tower, ChatGPT has 938 million downloads while its competitors lag far behind. Google’s Gemini has achieved 200 million downloads, DeepSeek has 127 million, Microsoft Copilot has 79 million and Perplexity has 47 million.
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OpenAI also laps its rivals when it comes to investment. It recently raised $8.3 billion, giving it a $300 billion valuation. In March, Anthropic, backed by Amazon, raised $3.5 billion in a Series E round, reaching a valuation of $61.5 billion, while in June, Morgan Stanley arranged a $5 billion debt package and a $300 million secondary stock sale for Musk, valuing xAI at $113 billion.
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