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Elon Musk has threatened to sue Apple for not putting his artificial intelligence chatbot at the top of its download charts. The combative Tesla boss has found himself embroiled in another row with the iPhone maker and Sam Altman’s OpenAI group.
Accusing Apple of breaking competition laws, Musk said that it was ‘impossible’ for any other AI company besides OpenAI to top the App Store charts. He said apps including his social platform X, formerly Twitter, and AI tool Grok, were missing out.
Musk said: ‘Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach Number 1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation.’
And he claimed that the App Store refuses to list either of his apps in its ‘Must Have’ section. The most downloaded free app on the App Store is OpenAI’s ChatGPT, while Grok is at number six.
In a scathing response, Open AI’s Altman said: ‘This is a remarkable claim given what I have heard alleged that Elon does to manipulate X to benefit himself and his own companies and harm his competitors and people he doesn’t like.’
The war of words is another installment in a feud between Musk, the world’s richest man worth £281 billion, and Altman, who is worth around £2billion. Just last week, Altman dismissed Musk and said: ‘I don’t think about him that much.’
![He said it seemed as if Musk was ‘just, like, tweeting all day [on X] about how much OpenAI sucks, and our model is bad, and, you know, we’re not gonna be a good company and all that.’ Musk and Altman founded OpenAI in 2015 but Musk left in 2019 and founded his own AI firm called xAI, which develops the chatbot Grok.](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/08/13/13/101023899-0-He_said_it_seemed_as_if_Musk_was_just_like_tweeting_all_day_on_X-a-23_1755089369331.jpg)
He said it seemed as if Musk was ‘just, like, tweeting all day [on X] about how much OpenAI sucks, and our model is bad, and, you know, we’re not gonna be a good company and all that.’ Musk and Altman founded OpenAI in 2015 but Musk left in 2019 and founded his own AI firm called xAI, which develops the chatbot Grok.
Musk has also been involved in a spat with former ally US President Donald Trump. Their relationship soured in June when Musk criticized the president’s tax policies.
Apple last night did not comment on Musk’s accusations. It is not the first time the tech giant has come under heat over its App store. It was fined £371million in July by the EU for breaching competition rules and was even threatened with higher penalties.
The EU had ruled that Apple prevented app developers from directing consumers outside its own platform.
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