Musk claims Apple is “manipulating” its App Store rankings to give rival AI apps an unfair boost and says his company, xAI, is ready to take immediate legal action over it.
In a series of posts on his platform X, he accused Apple of “playing politics” by leaving both X and Grok off the App Store’s recommended app list – and insists a lawsuit is now unavoidable.
Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either or Grok in your “Must Have” section when is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps?
Are you playing politics? What gives? Inquiring minds want to know. https://t.co/3wenLZGtwG
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 11, 2025
The thing is… Musk hasn’t shown any proof to back this up. And it is not even clear if he’s actually filed the lawsuit yet or if this is just more of his public sparring.
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
But Apple might not be completely innocent here. After all, the company has been under serious antitrust scrutiny before for its App Store rules, too. However, the past issues mostly centered around things like payment systems and how developers can talk to users, not how apps get ranked. So, this whole ranking controversy is new and we will see how it will play out. Still, the irony here? Musk himself has faced similar accusations of “meddling” before. After he bought Twitter in 2022 and rebranded it to X, a 2024 study found that the platform’s algorithm had been tweaked to boost his own posts.
And OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even responded to Musk’s latest jabs by digging up a 2023 Platformer report claiming Musk had a special system built to make sure everyone saw his tweets.
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