Billionaire Elon Musk, who owns SpaceX, Tesla, and X, has announced plans to sue Apple for not including X and its Grok AI chatbot app in the top recommended apps on its App Store. Musk shared his thoughts on X late Monday, stating, “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? Grok is owned by Musk’s AI startup xAI. He further expressed that “Apple is acting in a way that makes it impossible for any AI company other than OpenAI to achieve the #1 spot in the App Store, which constitutes a clear antitrust violation. xAI will pursue immediate legal action.” No additional details were provided. Apple has not yet responded, and the company has faced various antitrust allegations in recent years. Recently, a federal judge determined that Apple violated a court order in an antitrust lawsuit brought by Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite.
In April, regulators from the 27-nation European Union imposed a fine of 500 million euros on Apple for violating competition rules by preventing app developers from directing users to cheaper alternatives outside its App Store. Last year, the EU also fined the U.S. tech giant nearly $2 billion for unfairly promoting its own music streaming service by prohibiting competitors like Spotify from informing users about cheaper subscription options outside of iPhone apps. As of early Tuesday, the leading app in Apple’s App Store was TikTok, followed by Tinder, Duolingo, YouTube, and Bumble. OpenAI’s ChatGPT was ranked seventh.
