Elon Musk feels Apple favors OpenAI over xAI in App Retailer rankings

Elon Musk has accused Apple of committing an “unequivocal antitrust violation” by favoring OpenAI within the App Retailer rankings. In a publish on X, he claimed that Apple has made it unimaginable for different AI corporations to succeed in primary in these rankings and that xAI “will take instant authorized motion.” Musk did not make clear what he meant by that, and he additionally did not present proof that will show Apple’s supposed antitrust violation.

In an earlier post on X that is at present pinned to the highest of his profile, nonetheless, he tagged Apple, asking the corporate why it “[refuses] to place both X or Grok in [its] “Should Have” part. He mentioned X is “the #1 information app on this planet,” whereas Grok is ranked quantity 5 amongst all apps. “Are you taking part in politics? What provides?” he continued. In an announcement despatched to Bloomberg, Apple denied any wrongdoing and mentioned that the App Retailer “is designed to be truthful and freed from bias.” The spokesperson added: “We function hundreds of apps by charts, algorithmic suggestions and curated lists chosen by consultants utilizing goal standards. Our aim is to supply secure discovery for customers and invaluable alternatives for builders, collaborating with many to extend app visibility in quickly evolving classes.”

In the meantime, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted a response to Musk’s accusation on X, calling it a “outstanding declare,” provided that he has heard allegations that Musk manipulates “X to learn himself and his personal corporations and hurt his opponents and other people he does not like.” To notice, Chinese language AI chatbot DeepSeek became the top-rated free app on Apple’s App Retailer again in January, overtaking even ChatGPT.

Whereas Musk did not point out it, Apple has an ongoing partnership with OpenAI. The corporate has built-in ChatGPT into Apple Intelligence to energy cloud-based queries for its platforms. Extra just lately, the corporate mentioned that Apple Intelligence will leverage the capabilities of OpenAI’s GPT-5 in iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and macOS Tahoe 26, that are set to reach someday in September.

Replace, August 12, 2025, 8PM ET: This story has been up to date so as to add Microsoft’s assertion.