Elon Musk says he’s suing Apple for rigging App Store rankings
Elon Musk says that his artificial intelligence company xAI “will take immediate legal action” against Apple for allegedly manipulating its App Store rankings to the advantage of rival AI apps. In a series of X posts on Monday night, Musk suggested that Apple was “playing politics” by not placing either X or xAI’s Grok chatbot in the App Store’s list of recommended iOS apps, and that he had no choice but to file a lawsuit.
“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,” Musk said. “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?,” the xAI CEO asked Apple in another post, which is now pinned to his profile.
Musk provided no evidence for his claims, and it’s unclear if he has made good on his threats and filed the lawsuit yet.
An Apple statement reported by Bloomberg and attributed to an unnamed spokesperson says the App Store is “designed to be fair and free of bias… we feature thousands of apps through charts, algorithmic recommendations and curated lists selected by experts using objective criteria.” The Verge has also reached out to xAI and OpenAI for comment.
At the time of writing, ChatGPT is listed as Apple’s top free iPhone app in the US, with Grok ranked as the sixth. China’s DeepSeek AI briefly managed to take the top App Store position from ChatGPT in January, however, disproving Musk’s claim that it would be impossible for other AI apps to do so.
Accusations of meddling from Musk are ironic, given allegations about alterations made to X after he acquired the company in 2022, then known as Twitter. A research study in 2024 suggested that X’s algorithm was manipulated to boost posts from Musk’s account. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to Musk’s posts by sharing a Platformer report from 2023 that similarly found Musk had a system built to promote his X posts to the entire platform’s userbase. In June, the “maximally truth-seeking” Grok chatbot was also found to be consulting Musk’s opinion before providing answers to controversial questions around topics like Israel and Palestine, US immigration, and abortion.
This isn’t the first time that Musk has beefed with Apple and OpenAI. Musk was an early founder at OpenAI, and previously targeted the AI startup via lawsuits and a unanimously rejected $97.4 billion buyout offer after taking issue with its pivot to being a profit-driven business. Following OpenAI’s partnership with Apple to integrate ChatGPT into iPhones, iPads, and Macs last year, Musk threatened to ban Apple devices at his companies if OpenAI’s tech was fused with Apple’s OS.
Update, August 12th: Added statement from Apple given to Bloomberg.