• by Laurie Sullivan , 3 hours ago

Elon Musk, founder of xAI Holdings, lashed out against Apple’s app store late Monday, accusing the iPhone maker of favoring OpenAI. 

Musk’s company xAI Holdings houses the Grok artificial intelligence (AI) team and X social network.

“Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either X or Grok in your ‘Must Have’ section when X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps?” Musk wrote on X.

Apple, according to Musk, makes it impossible for anyone other than OpenAI to reach the top of the App Store charts, a spotlight ranking for app developers.

“Are you playing politics?” Musk asked on X. "What gives? Inquiring minds want to know.”

During the weekend, xAI made Grok 4 free for users worldwide, helping the app climb to No. 5 in the overall App Store ranking and second in the Productivity category. OpenAI’s ChatGPT app is the most-downloaded free iPhone app in the U.S., ahead of Grok.

Apple has partnered with OpenAI, integrating ChatGPT into iPhones, iPads and Macs.

OpenAI on Thursday announced GPT-5, its latest and most advanced large-scale AI model, following the xAI Grok 4 chatbot released last month.

Musk co-founded OpenAI, but parted ways with Sam Altman and others early on. Then he sued Altman and OpenAI to block its transition to a for-profit model.

OpenAI's ChatGPT has spent the better part of the past year hovering at, or near, the top of Apple’s charts.

For the past year, Apple has also repeatedly featured ChatGPT in its App Store editorial content. More significantly, it partnered with OpenAI as part of its new Apple Intelligence rollout, which includes direct Siri integration and support for the Writing Tools feature.