Musk has coalition support in lawsuit threat against Apple over App Store treatment

By Tom Jopyce
The Center Square

Elon Musk has the support of a coalition of tech companies after the X owner and Tesla founder says he will sue Apple, alleging the tech giant is using its App Store to stifle competition in artificial intelligence.

Musk wrote on X that his AI company, xAI, would take “immediate legal action” against Apple for what he called “unequivocal antitrust” violations.

“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. “xAI will take immediate legal action.”

Musk claimed Apple refused to feature both X and Grok, his AI chatbot, in its “Must Have” app section despite X ranking as the top news app and Grok ranking fifth overall.

“Hey @Apple – App Store, 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?” Musk wrote. “And why is ChatGPT literally in every list where you have editorial control?”

Apple partnered with OpenAI in 2024 to integrate its ChatGPT technology into Apple products under “Apple Intelligence.”

The Coalition for a Competitive Mobile Experience, led by veteran antitrust expert Brandon Kressin, backed Musk’s stance.

“CCME is glad to see @elonmusk lend a voice to the thousands of app developers who have been harmed by Apple’s anti competitive, anti-consumer App Store rules,” CCME posted on X. “Apple continues to favor its own apps and hardware, heaping harmful restrictions on third-party developers that put entrepreneurs at a disadvantage. It is time to break Apple’s stranglehold of the App Store.”

CCME “is a diverse group of companies seeking to improve consumers’ experiences with their devices by making the space more open and competitive,” according to its website. It includes companies such as Meta, Spotify and Garmin.

Apple’s website says the App Store is “highly curated” with each app reviewed by “experts and an editorial team,” and uses both human oversight and automated tools to impact rankings, according to Yahoo Finance.

Musk is already in litigation with OpenAI, which he co-founded in 2015 but later left. That lawsuit, set for trial in March 2026, hopes to block OpenAI’s for-profit conversion.

An Apple spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment on Tuesday.