Billionaire Elon Musk, through his social media platform X and AI company xAI, filed a lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI on Monday, August 25, 2025. The lawsuit, lodged in a Texas federal court, accuses both companies of engaging in anti-competitive practices by unfairly favoring other artificial intelligence (AI) companies, specifically OpenAI, across iPhones. Musk alleges that this partnership prevents other chatbot makers from effectively competing in the market.

According to the lawsuit, Apple's decision to integrate OpenAI's technology into the iPhone's operating system is detrimental to market competition and restricts consumer choice. A key claim made by Elon Musk is that Apple's actions make it virtually impossible for any AI chatbot other than OpenAI-run ChatGPT to achieve top rankings on the App Store charts. The lawsuit explicitly states that without this exclusive deal with OpenAI, Apple would have no justifiable reason to refrain from more prominently featuring applications like the X app and the Grok app in its App Store.

OpenAI, however, has dismissed Musk's legal action as part of an "ongoing pattern of harassment," as stated by an OpenAI spokesperson to the news agency. The partnership between Apple and OpenAI is reportedly centered around building the latest generation of iPhones with integrated AI capabilities. Musk's companies further asserted in the lawsuit that the "exclusive arrangement has made ChatGPT the only generative AI chatbot integrated into the iPhone," thereby allowing Apple and OpenAI to "lock up markets to maintain their monopolies and prevent innovators like X and xAI from competing."

This legal challenge emerges amidst a broader context of Apple facing scrutiny from regulators concerning alleged illegal squelching of competition within the smartphone mobile application marketplace. The tech giant has also been involved in a protracted five-year legal battle with Epic Games Inc., the creator of Fortnite, over the App Store's dominant position in the smartphone software market. Elon Musk's recent filing follows his prior public questioning of Apple, asking if they were 'playing politics' by not highlighting his products in their online stores. In response to such queries and accusations, Apple has previously issued an official statement affirming that its company is "designed to be fair and free of bias."