Following Elon Musk's wild anti-trust accusations surrounding X and the App Store, Apple has broken its silence and issued a response to the billionaire's claims.
If there's anything that Elon Musk isn't afraid of it's a lawsuit, as he has frequently been on both sides of accused and accuser when it comes to legal action surrounding his businesses.
While former employees and angry shareholders have taken Musk to court, Musk has equally attempted to flex his legal muscles in major anti-trust cases against OpenAI and Microsoft, and appears to have Apple next up in his crosshairs.
Why does Musk want to sue Apple?
Musk's current altercation with Apple initially began with a post on X from DogeDesigner, who wrote: "X is the #1 news app in the US, leading both the 'Free' and 'Grossing' categories on the App Store. Why is it hard to find and not featured on Apple's News page, while ChatGPT is promoted everywhere?"
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This caught the attention of the richest man in the world, causing him to quote the post and ask: "Why are the Grok and X app excluded from every list, expect those measuring raw downloads, but ChatGPT is on every list? This is messed up!"
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He followed it up with a briefly pinned post asking if Apple is 'playing politics', before issuing a threat of legal action against the tech behemoth.
"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."
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This then spawned another chapter of Musk's long-running feud with ChatGPT CEO Sam Altman where Grok even called Elon a hypocrite, but shortly after Apple chimed in with its own response to the billionaire's threats.
How has Apple responded?
As reported by the BBC, Apple has immediately shut down Elon Musk's claims in a new statement, insisting that its App Store is "designed to be free and fair of bias."
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The company also outlined when speaking to the broadcaster: "We feature thousands of apps through charts, algorithmic recommendations and curated lists selected by experts using objective criteria," denying Musk's claims that his companies have been artificially suppressed, especially in favor of OpenAI's offerings.
Apple does have an ongoing partnership with ChatGPT that began in June 2024, but it maintains that this does not influence any App Store rankings, especially as competing AI options such as DeepSeek and Perplexity have since reached the top of the charts.