Elon Musk, Altman Clash Over Apple’s App Store Rankings

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has accused Apple of unfairly favouring ChatGPT over its App Store rankings, sparking a heated public spat with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and threats of legal action.

“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,” Musk wrote on his social platform X on Monday, without providing evidence. “xAI will take immediate legal action,” he added, referring to his own AI company.

Several X users quickly pointed out that China’s DeepSeek AI topped the App Store earlier this year and Perplexity AI recently held the number one spot in India. Both compete with OpenAI and Musk’s xAI.

Altman dismissed Musk’s claim as “remarkable” in a post on Tuesday, accusing the billionaire of being the one who manipulated his own platform. “Musk was alleged to manipulate X to benefit himself and his own companies and harm his competitors and people he doesn’t like,” Altman wrote.

The exchange escalated when Musk called Altman a “liar,” prompting the OpenAI boss to challenge him: “Would you sign a sworn legal statement declaring you never ordered changes to the X algorithm to harm competitors or help your own companies?”

The row came days after both companies unveiled updated versions of their AI assistants, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and xAI’s Grok. As of Tuesday, ChatGPT was the top free iPhone app, while Grok ranked fifth.

Apple, which factors user engagement, reviews, and download numbers into App Store rankings, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

LEADERSHIP reports that the two companies’ rivalry has intensified since Apple and OpenAI announced a partnership in June 2024 to integrate ChatGPT into iPhones and other devices. OpenAI said last week that its new ChatGPT-5 model is free for nearly 700 million weekly users.

Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but cut ties with the company years before its ChatGPT breakthrough in late 2022. In April, OpenAI filed counterclaims against Musk in a Northern California federal court, accusing him of waging a “relentless campaign” to damage the organisation after leaving.

“Musk made it his project to take down OpenAI, and to build a direct competitor that would seize the technological lead — not for humanity but for Elon Musk,” the filing stated.

Recall that Musk previously sued OpenAI, alleging it betrayed its founding mission of developing artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanity. He launched xAI in 2023 to compete with OpenAI and other major players such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon.