Elon Musk Sues Apple Over Alleged Anti-Competitive Deal with OpenAI

Tech mogul Elon Musk is taking his competition with OpenAI to new heights, initiating a legal dispute that involves Apple as well. Two of his companies, X and xAI, have filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Texas, asserting that major tech firms entered into an anti-competitive agreement that excludes competitors from the lucrative smartphone AI market.

Musk is challenging the exclusive partnership between Apple and OpenAI, which embeds OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot directly within iPhones, enabling users to access it through Siri and other system functions without requiring a separate app download.

The lawsuit targets the core of the smartphone AI competition, where access to hundreds of millions of users holds significant commercial value.

Musk’s xAI is responsible for developing Grok, a competitor to ChatGPT in the rapidly growing Gen AI market. However, due to the exclusive deal between Apple and OpenAI, Grok fails to enjoy the privileged access that ChatGPT has on iPhones, necessitating users to download a separate app or visit a website.