The lawsuit, filed by Musk’s AI startup xAI and its social network business X, alleges Apple and OpenAI have “colluded” to maintain monopolies in the smartphone and generative AI markets.
Musk’s xAI acquired X in March in an all-stock transaction.
It accuses Apple of deprioritizing so-called “super apps” and generative AI chatbot competitors, such as xAI’s Grok, in its App Store rankings, while favoring OpenAI by integrating its ChatGPT chatbot into Apple products.
“In a desperate bid to protect its smartphone monopoly, Apple has joined forces with the company that most benefits from inhibiting competition and innovation in AI: OpenAI, a monopolist in the market for generative AI chatbots,” according to the complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
An OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement: “This latest filing is consistent with Mr. Musk’s ongoing pattern of harassment.”
Representatives from Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Tesla CEO launched xAI in 2023 in a bid to compete with OpenAI and other leading chatbot makers.
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Musk earlier this month threatened to sue Apple for “an unequivocal antitrust violation,” saying in a post on X that the company “is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store.”
After Musk threatened to sue Apple, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded: “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.”
An Apple spokesperson previously said its App Store was designed to be “fair and free of bias,” and that the company features “thousands of apps” using a variety of signals.
Apple last year partnered with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into iPhone, iPad, Mac laptop and desktop products.
Several users replied to Musk’s post on X via its Community Notes feature saying that rival chatbot apps such as DeepSeek and Perplexity were ranked No. 1 on the App Store after Apple and OpenAI announced their partnership.
The lawsuit is the latest twist in an ongoing clash between Musk and Altman. Musk co-founded OpenAI alongside Altman in 2015, before leaving the startup in 2018 due to disagreements over OpenAI’s direction.
Musk sued OpenAI and Altman last year, accusing them of breach of contract by putting commercial interests ahead of its original mission to develop AI “for the benefit of humanity broadly.”
In a counter claim, OpenAI has alleged that Musk and xAI engaged in “harassment” through litigation, attacks on social media and in the press, and through a “sham bid” to buy the ChatGPT-maker for $97.4 billion designed to harm the company’s business relationships.
Shares of Electronic Arts closed up 15% on Friday following a report in the Wall Street Journal that the video game company is nearing a roughly $50 billion deal to go private.
Investors including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and Silver Lake could announce the deal as soon as next week, the report said. PIF has been pouring billions of dollars into gaming, purchasing the makers of Pokemon Go and the parent company behind Monopoly Go, for example.
Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners is another participating investor, according to a source familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.
The deal would be the largest leveraged buyout in Wall Street history, surpassing the agreement to take TXU Energy private for about $45 billion in 2007. A leveraged buyout (LBO) is when debt is predominately used for an acquisition, a tactic traditionally used by private equity firms or activists.
EA makes popular video games including The Sims, Madden NFL, the soccer game FC, formerly known as FIFA. With Friday’s gains, the stock is up about 32% for the year.
EA did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Former Meta global affairs chief Nick Clegg said Friday that tech companies should keep a distance from politics and people should feel “uneasy” about those firms intervening in the public space.
“I generally don’t think that politics and tech innovation mixes very well,” Clegg told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “I think it’s quite good when they kind of keep each other at a certain, respectful distance.”
President Donald Trump‘s deal with China this week to keep TikTok alive in the U.S. includes heavy doses of both elements, and the balance between the technology and political interests will be closely watched.
Clegg said two details should be especially looked at with TikTok: The safety of American data and the ownership of the algorithm, which he said would be “quite difficult” to share.
Clegg, who stepped down from his role at Meta earlier this year, questioned if U.S. data would be “kept safe here and not subject to surveillance,” but was also critical of other government efforts to silo data.
Clegg noted a recent legislative effort by India to impose “hard data localization” that would keep all data about citizens in India.
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“The moment countries start doing that, the dominoes will start to fall,” he said. “If everybody says, ‘No, we want our slice of the … data cake.’ Then, of course, the open data flows that drives the internet will start eroding.”
Trump’s executive order for the new TikTok structure establishes a joint-venture company to oversee TikTok’s U.S. data and algorithm, with Oracle controlling cloud services and running the app’s security operations, CNBC’s David Faber reported.
Neither China nor TikTok parent company ByteDance has commented on Trump’s Thursday executive order.
Clegg said the biggest risk to the internet is possibly the relationship between the U.S. and China, noting the potential of any fallout to push other countries into different policies.
He said the image of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi standing next to Chinese President Xi Jinping during a recent visit was “striking.”
“If India starts emulating China and starts trying to sort of cut off India, much like China has done from the rest of the internet. … I think that would be terrible for the kind of global open principles that the internet was based on,” Clegg said.
A car equipped with Momenta technology on display at the IAA Mobility show in Munich, Germany in September 2025.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
Momenta, a Chinese driverless technology startup, is raising a fresh round of funding that could value the company at around $6 billion, two people familiar with the matter told CNBC.
The valuation could change as the funding progresses, one of the people, who wished to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to discuss the details publicly, said.
Bloomberg first reported the deal with a valuation above $5 billion.
Momenta declined to comment when contacted by CNBC.
The Beijing-headquartered company develops software and algorithms that can be used by automakers to give their vehicles some automated driving features. These company claims that its Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) allows a car to carry out some functions autonomously such as changing lanes.
This week Momenta and Mercedes-Benz struck a deal to bring the Chinese firm’s technology to the German auto giant’s all-new electric CLA in China. The technology will power Mercedes-Benz’s driver assistance system across highways, urban streets, and parking, the two companies said in a joint press release on Thursday.
Momenta’s technology will eventually be equipped on 40 models developed by Mercedes-Benz, a person familiar with the matter said.
BMW signed a similar deal in June to equip its Neue Klasse electric vehicles in China with Momenta technology.
The company is participating in a competitive market that includes players like Nvidia and Horizon Robotics in China. There are a number of other players in the autonomous driving software space including WeRide and Pony.ai.
Signing with global automakers is a big win for Momenta which is also gearing up for an initial public offering. Reuters reported on Friday that the company is considering shifting its listing to Hong Kong from New York.