In a move that has once again put him at the center of the tech world's most high-stakes feuds, Elon Musk has taken his battle with OpenAI to a new front: the App Store. In a post on his social network X, Musk accused Apple of an antitrust violation, alleging that the tech giant is deliberately favoring ChatGPT and making it "impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1." The post, which was made without any evidence to back the claim, concluded with a vow of "immediate legal action" from his own artificial intelligence company, xAI.
Musk’s claim, however, was quickly met with pushback from users on X, who pointed out that other AI companies have successfully reached the top of the App Store charts. DeepSeek AI from China, for instance, hit the top spot earlier this year, and Perplexity AI recently ranked number one in the App Store in India. Both DeepSeek and Perplexity are direct competitors to OpenAI and Musk's startup xAI, which was founded in 2023 to challenge the AI industry's established players. The current App Store rankings on Tuesday listed ChatGPT as the top free iPhone app, with Grok, xAI's AI assistant, in fifth place.
The accusations are the latest salvo in a bitter and long-running feud between Musk and OpenAI, a company he co-founded before abandoning it years before its breakthrough achievements with ChatGPT. In April of this year, OpenAI filed a countersuit against Musk, accusing him of waging a "relentless campaign" to damage the organization after it achieved success without him. The company alleged in legal documents that after leaving, Musk "made it his project to take down OpenAI, and to build a direct competitor that would seize the technological lead—not for humanity but for Elon Musk."
This new battleground comes at a time of intense competition in the AI sector. Tech giants like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft have been pouring billions of dollars into artificial intelligence since the blockbuster launch of the first version of ChatGPT in late 2022. The recent release of new versions of both ChatGPT and Grok has only intensified the rivalry, as companies race to dominate the rapidly evolving market.
