xAI’s lawsuit accusing Apple and OpenAI of anticompetitive practices has less to do with Grok’s App Store visibility, and more to do with a fixation Musk has had since he first acquired Twitter. Here are the details.
A bit of context
Last July, xAI released Grok 4, rolled out the Grok Imagine tool, and introduced customizable companion chatbots. This helped the Grok app climb from 60th place in the App Store ranking to 29th, according to historical data from AppFigures.
A few days after that, xAI made Grok 4 available for free to all users worldwide, which helped it rise to 5th place. That frustrated Elon Musk, who accused Apple of intentionally sandbagging Grok’s visibility in the App Store. The claim was immediately refuted by X’s own users:
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.
xAI will take immediate legal action. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2025
Following denials by both Apple and Sam Altman in the name of OpenAI, Musk actually filed the lawsuit, which is introduced as follows:
This is a tale of two monopolists joining forces to ensure their continued dominance in a world rapidly driven by the most powerful technology humanity has ever created: artificial intelligence (“AI”). Working in tandem, Defendants Apple and OpenAI have locked up markets to maintain their monopolies and prevent innovators like X and xAI from competing. Plaintiffs bring this suit to stop Defendants from perpetrating their anticompetitive scheme and to recover billions in damages.
In the complaint summary, xAI alleges the following:
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