Judge Denies Apple, OpenAI Bid to Dismiss Elon Musk’s Antitrust Lawsuit

A federal judge on Thursday denied Apple and OpenAI’s motions to dismiss Elon Musk’s antitrust lawsuit, allowing X Corp.

On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Pittman rejected the two companies’ attempts to dismiss the case, saying the allegations merited further examination through summary judgment.

“This order should not be construed as a judgment (or pre-judgment) on the merits of this litigation,” kingdom he says

U processpresented in August, targets Apple’s June 2024 decision to make ChatGPT the exclusive AI assistant built into iOS.

“This is a procedural step. The real impact now is where the facts will really be proven,” said Alex Chandra, a partner at IGNOS Law Alliance. Decrypt.

The case highlights “a globally unresolved question” about how “default AI integrations on dominant platforms” should be handled under antitrust law, with regulators still defining what even is the “AI market,” Chandra added.

X Corp. and xAI’s complaint seeks billions in damages, claiming the exclusive deal gives ChatGPT access to “hundreds of millions of iPhones” while blocking competitors like xAI’s Grok chatbot.

The lawsuit says ChatGPT controls “at least 80 percent” of the generative AI chatbot market while Grok only holds “a few percent” despite superior capabilities.

Musk’s companies also accuse Apple of manipulating App Store rankings to favor ChatGPT while suppressing competitors. Despite the fact that Grok is ranked second in the “Productivity” category of Apple and the X ranking first in “News”, neither appears in the prominent section “Must-Have Apps”, where ChatGPT is presented.

Ishita Sharma, managing partner of Fathom Legal, said Decrypt the case hinges on “evidence of exclusion versus efficiency,” whether rivals are “truly blocked” by Apple’s iOS or whether it is simply a “competitive partnership in an emerging but rapidly growing market”.

The defense will likely argue that “competition remains alive” across platforms and browsers, that the deal cannot be “strictly exclusive” contractually, and that the integration provides competitive efficiencies, Sharma added.

Decrypt has reached out to Apple, OpenAI and X for comment.

Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 with Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever, but left his board in 2018, according to an announcement that said his departure would “eliminate a potential future conflict” as Tesla developed its own AI work.

Since then, Musk has accused OpenAI to abandon the opening for “a closed arm, driven by the profit of Microsoft” and has repeatedly sued, especially a lawsuit to abandon its founding mission and a lawsuit filed two months ago accusing theft of trade secrets.