Daijiworld Media Network – Texas

Texas, Aug 26: Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI has filed a lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI in a US federal court, accusing them of anticompetitive practices and conspiracy to dominate the smartphone and generative AI chatbot markets.

The 61-page complaint, filed in Texas on Monday, names xAI and X (formerly Twitter) as plaintiffs. The suit seeks a jury trial and “billions in damages,” alleging that Apple and OpenAI have “locked up markets to maintain their monopolies and prevent innovators like X and xAI from competing.”

At the centre of the dispute is the Apple-OpenAI deal announced in 2024, which gives ChatGPT first-party integration into iPhones. xAI claims this arrangement discourages users from downloading rival chatbots, thereby denying competitors vital access to user prompts.

“ChatGPT is advantaged even as to users who do download generative AI chatbots through the App Store because Apple’s integration with ChatGPT amounts to an endorsement and award of default status,” the lawsuit states.

The case comes just weeks after Musk accused Apple of unfairly boosting ChatGPT’s visibility in App Store rankings while sidelining his chatbot Grok. Musk also alleged that Apple repeatedly featured OpenAI’s chatbot in “every editorial section,” calling the practice biased and exclusionary.

This is Musk’s first lawsuit against OpenAI on monopoly grounds. However, in 2024, he had sued the company over its restructuring into a for-profit arm, a case that is scheduled for a jury trial in March 2026.