Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Monday filed a lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI, alleging that the two tech giants colluded to entrench monopolies in the booming artificial intelligence chatbot market. Musk has spent the past month lambasting Apple for promoting rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT in the App Store while demoting or ignoring his own competing Grok chatbot.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Musk’s companies X and xAI, goes beyond a simple gripe about App Store rankings. It alleges that Apple and OpenAI entered into an exclusive partnership for ChatGPT to gain access to Apple’s smartphone features and lock out rivals from its user base, in violation of antitrust and unfair competition laws. The arrangement, Musk’s filing claims, endangers his plans to build a so-called “everything app” atop Twitter, which he acquired for $44 billion in 2022.

Apple, per the lawsuit, built ChatGPT into iOS as the default chatbot used by Siri and Apple’s Writing Tools, among other features. In the process, Musk claims, Apple has given OpenAI exclusive access to billions of user prompts. The data will be crucial to training and improving chatbot models, and, according to X, without access to the data, rivals like Grok can’t scale. Apple’s integration of ChatGPT into its devices is a “game over” for generative AI chatbots like Grok unless Apple is stopped, X writes in the filing.

X further alleges that the deal, which gives OpenAI access to Apple users, will enable it to cement its lead. The filing estimates that OpenAI already controls at least 80 percent of the chatbot market, and Apple’s integration will let it dominate indefinitely. “Generative AI chatbots would vigorously compete with one another in a fair market. Instead, defendants’ anticompetitive conduct has handed a substantial portion of the market to ChatGPT,” the lawsuit states.

The complaint also argues that Apple is acting out of self-interest in cutting out a potential super app competitor to the Phone. Apple, X claims, fears a service like Grok could one day make iPhones less essential to the user experience, especially in emerging markets. Apple also wants to avert a future where the iPhone is replaced as a one-stop shop for basic services, as WeChat has become to Chinese consumers. The suit cites Apple executive Eddy Cue allegedly telling OpenAI that Apple is “scared to death” that advances in AI could “destroy Apple’s smartphone business.”

Musk’s filing characterizes the deal as a desperate effort to save the iPhone monopoly, as well as a way to help OpenAI build an insurmountable lead in generative AI, which is the focus of intense competition between the two companies. Musk is seeking billions in damages and a permanent injunction barring Apple’s integration of ChatGPT.

The filing compares Apple’s deal with OpenAI to its exclusive search deal with Google, which U.S. regulators have alleged entrenched Google’s search monopoly. X alleges that Apple rejected its repeated requests to integrate Grok with iOS as it did for ChatGPT, as well as an earlier request to feature Grok prominently in the App Store when Apple launched its new “Imagine” feature. The filing further claims that Apple has manipulated App Store rankings to Grok’s detriment and has delayed approving Grok updates in an effort to stifle competition.

At issue is not just Grok’s competitive prospects, but the very future of chatbots and AI platforms in general. The suit notes that Siri alone handled 1.5 billion user requests per day globally in 2024, more than the total prompts across all generative AI chatbots that year. If only OpenAI receives that data and scales with it, the company would effectively have a monopoly over the largest potential user base of all chatbots, according to X.

The deal may also have far-reaching consequences for consumers. The filing warns that Apple’s customers may face “higher prices, fewer choices, and less capable chatbots” and that OpenAI may use its market power to raise prices, with a plan to double its “plus” subscription over the next four years. “That plan would be unfeasible unless OpenAI has power over marketwide prices,” the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit also claims that Apple’s integration of ChatGPT to the exclusion of all other chatbots will stifle investment in the field. If Apple continues to “press its thumb firmly on the scale” in ChatGPT’s favor, investors will see little value in backing rival chatbots, and startups will have trouble raising money to scale. The result will be a loss of talent to Big Tech giants buying up smaller developers, according to X.

The suit questions the economics of the Apple-OpenAI partnership. Per X, OpenAI gave ChatGPT to Apple for free, essentially paying for the exclusive partnership, and Apple stands to make no profit in the near term. If that is the case, the lawsuit suggests, both Apple and OpenAI value the exclusion of competitors above direct financial gain.

“By making the deal exclusive, Apple sacrificed the profits it would have earned by integrating multiple chatbots,” the complaint argues. “The true motive was Apple and OpenAI’s shared goal of blocking competition.”