SpaceXAI drops Apple from their App Store antitrust suit, but keeps going after OpenAI
Musk's companies have made peace with Apple in court, on terms nobody is disclosing, and the remaining case now looks a lot like Musk v. OpenAI, round two.
Elon Musk’s legal fight with Apple over the App Store is over, at least in this courtroom. His fight with OpenAI is not.
On September 14, X and SpaceXAI, the company formerly known as xAI, asked a federal judge to throw out their antitrust claims against Apple while leaving every claim against OpenAI in place. The motion, filed under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(2), says the plaintiffs “have resolved their claims” against Apple. Apple is not opposing it. Judge Mark Pittman still has to approve.
The one term worth knowing is “with prejudice.” It means the dismissal is permanent. X and SpaceXAI cannot come back later and file the same claims against Apple again. This isn’t some pauses, it closes the door on this issue between SpaceXAI and Apple.
A quick rewind: Last year Musk accused Apple and OpenAI of working together to keep rival AI apps from getting visibility on the App Store. X and xAI then sued both companies, arguing that Apple’s deal to build ChatGPT into Siri and Apple Intelligence handed OpenAI an advantage no competitor could match. Apple and OpenAI both denied everything. The case moved into discovery, which is the phase where lawyers argue about who has to hand over which emails.
That phase has not been comfortable for Musk. A few months ago a federal judge ordered him to produce potentially relevant messages from his Tesla and SpaceX accounts, after OpenAI argued he had been running xAI business through them.
So why let Apple walk now? The filing does not say, and neither does anyone else. “Resolved” could mean money changed hands, or that a quiet understanding was reached, or simply that the Apple half of the case was the part least likely to survive. We don’t know for sure, since the terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
What remains is a case against three OpenAI entities, including the one now called OpenAI Foundation, over the same alleged unfair advantage. That puts it in familiar territory. Musk’s earlier suit against OpenAI, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and Microsoft, which claimed the company abandoned its nonprofit mission and enriched its executives, ended in May when a jury found the claims had been filed too late. Notice what that verdict was not: a ruling on whether he was right. The clock beat him, not the argument.
This case is the next attempt, with a different legal theory and one fewer defendant. My guess is that the Apple dismissal makes the remaining case narrower but not weaker on paper. What would change my mind is the settlement terms leaking and showing Apple gave up something on ranking or distribution. That would mean Musk got what he actually wanted from Apple without a trial, and the OpenAI claims are just what is left over.
Watch for Judge Pittman’s order approving the dismissal, any disclosure of what “resolved” means, and whether Grok’s position on iPhones changes in the coming months.