Musk Drops Apple From App Store Antitrust Suit, Keeps Case Against OpenAI
X Corp and xAI moved on Sept. 14, 2026, to dismiss their antitrust claims against Apple in federal court in Texas. The filing ends the Apple portion of a lawsuit that accused Apple of suppressing the Grok app on the App Store and of violating competition law through its integration of ChatGPT into Apple Intelligence, Apple's built-in AI system for iPhones. Engadget
The dismissal covers Apple only. Musk's companies will continue the same case against OpenAI. Engadget
The case is listed as X Corp. v. Apple Inc., Case No. 4:25-cv-00914. Court records show docket ID 71191818 and list a Motion to Dismiss for Failure to State a Claim, a standard early request to throw out a case for lack of legal basis, among the first filings. CourtListener
The fight started in public in August 2025. Musk threatened to sue Apple for not featuring X or Grok among its top apps, a claim that drew a public reply from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. France24
Later that month, xAI sued Apple and OpenAI over AI competition and App Store rankings. Reuters The complaint said Apple's deal with OpenAI led Apple to give less prominent placement to the X app and the Grok app. The suit alleged rigged charts and favoritism. Mashable Antitrust, in this context, means laws against the abuse of market power to block rivals.
Money was central from the start. The plaintiffs sought billions of dollars for the alleged harm to ranking and distribution. Reuters
Apple and OpenAI asked the judge to dismiss the claims about App Store practices. On Nov. 13, 2025, a U.S. federal judge denied those requests and ruled the companies must face the claims for now. Reuters Coverage of that ruling noted that the X and Grok apps rank high in App Store charts.
Apple has said its OpenAI integration on iPhones is not exclusive, meaning other AI assistants can also be integrated. Reuters
A separate issue ran alongside the competition case. Apple told U.S. senators that Musk's xAI had not done enough to stop Grok from creating nude or sexualized deepfakes, which are AI-generated fake images of real people. Apple threatened to remove the Grok app from the App Store over those concerns. NBC News
The Musk-OpenAI court record has widened beyond this case. OpenAI asked a federal judge to dismiss a trade-secret lawsuit, a case about claims it hired away xAI employees to obtain confidential information. Reuters In May 2026, OpenAI defeated a separate lawsuit from Musk, removing an obstacle to its IPO, its plan to sell shares to the public. A jury found Musk waited too long to sue OpenAI and reached its verdict in under two hours. Reuters
The broader context here will be familiar to technology professionals. Placement in the App Store and built-in AI options strongly affect which products users try first. They are difficult antitrust targets when ranking systems are opaque, when human editorial choice and automated sorting overlap, and when plaintiffs must tie a placement decision to a specific exclusionary deal.
In my view, the split result narrows the fight. Dropping Apple while continuing against OpenAI shifts attention from platform gatekeeping to the model partnership itself. That is a clearer technical question. It asks whether an integration deal changed distribution, and whether that effect can be separated from normal competition among capable assistants. For builders, distribution still decides which AI product most users touch first, even as models grow closer in capability. Court rulings do not remove that constraint. They only set its legal limits.
