Elon Musk files a lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI over their AI partnership.
Musk has escalated his public feud with OpenAI and Apple by suing the tech giants for their favouritism in the AI app market. The Tesla CEO's artificial intelligence startup xAI filed the suit in a Texas court Monday (25 August), alleging 'a conspiracy to monopolize the markets for smartphones and generative AI chatbots.' This legal action follows Musk's recent threats on X accusing Apple of unfair practices in iOS.
"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 posted on his owned platform, X. "xAI will take immediate legal action."
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The complaint reads: “Defendants entered an unlawful agreement and conspiracy to leverage Apple’s monopoly power in the US smartphone market to maintain OpenAI’s monopoly power in generative AI chatbots."
The complaint seeks to 'recover billions in damages' and aims to undo what it describes as a deal that has 'locked up markets.'
In response, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman rejected Musk's allegations and characterised the lawsuit as part of his ongoing campaign against the company.
"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," Altman replied.
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The lawsuit represents the latest escalation in the personal feud between Musk and Altman. The two billionaires co-founded the ChatGPT developer in 2015 but have since had a very public falling out.
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Then in 2018, Musk decided to step away from OpenAI after proposing to take control of the company. He has since filed multiple lawsuits challenging OpenAI's transition from a nonprofit to a for-profit enterprise.
“We’re sad that it’s come to this with someone whom we’ve deeply admired – someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, started a competitor, and then sued us when we started making meaningful progress towards OpenAI’s mission without him,” OpenAI posted in a statement last year, following one of Musk’s lawsuits.
In February, he offered $97.4 billion to buy the company outright, claiming he wanted to preserve its original mission of ensuring 'artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.' The proposal was quickly rejected by Altman.
This recent legal battle comes as OpenAI reportedly seeks a $500 billion valuation, which would make it the world's most valuable private company, surpassing even Musk's SpaceX, currently valued at $350 billion.