A lawsuit filed Monday by Elon Musk and his companies goes beyond complaints over App Store rankings to accuse Apple and OpenAI of conspiring to monopolize artificial intelligence chatbots. The legal action escalates weeks of criticism from Musk, who took to social media earlier this month to vent about Apple unfairly promoting OpenAI’s ChatGPT while his own chatbot Grok remains mysteriously absent from the App Store’s “Must Have” list.

Musk’s suit alleges Apple and OpenAI have agreed to let ChatGPT tap into iPhone features and apps while barring rivals from integrating with iOS. In return, OpenAI made ChatGPT the default across features like Siri, Apple’s Writing Tools, and others. That access is estimated to give OpenAI data on at least 1 billion Apple users, providing a massive advantage Musk argues could last “decades or longer.” Violating antitrust and unfair competition laws, X argues the deal locks competitors out of Apple’s massive user base while giving OpenAI an insurmountable head start, imperiling Musk’s vision of a super app built on the back of his $44 billion Twitter acquisition in 2022.

X accuses Apple of making ChatGPT the default chatbot in iOS, including Siri, Apple’s Writing Tools, and other features. In exchange, ChatGPT alone would be available for integration across the iPhone’s operating system. The deal would grant OpenAI exclusive access to billions of user prompts, which X argues are essential to scaling and improving chatbot performance. Meanwhile, Apple will stop supporting rival models by 2026. X’s lawsuit claims Apple and OpenAI control at least 80 percent of the chatbot market, with OpenAI commanding a further lead and a high probability of remaining the dominant player.

“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,” Musk’s suit states.

Motivated to squash competition from a “super app” rival, Musk’s filing states Apple is seeking to prevent an app from “becoming the iPhone for the next generation in the same way that iPhone was for the previous one.” The filing claims Apple does not want Grok to “potentially cannibalize Apple’s lucrative businesses” and points to Apple executive Eddy Cue’s alleged statement over the past decade that advances in AI and generative AI in particular would “destroy Apple’s smartphone business.”

Musk’s complaint slams Apple’s deal with OpenAI as “pay-for-exclusivity” and characterizes it as an anti-competitive deal to “lock out potential competitors and cement ChatGPT’s share of the market.” The deal, it states, is similar to Apple’s ongoing search engine arrangement with Google, which U.S. regulators have long sought to unwind over competition concerns.

Musk’s suit details repeated rejections of xAI’s integration requests and Apple’s refusal to feature Grok in the App Store despite the launch of its new “Imagine” AI feature. The filing also claims Apple artificially pushed Grok’s ranking down in App Store searches and delayed Grok updates to stifle competition.

Musk has claimed the AI race is a “make or break” proposition, and his suit describes a super app as the “single largest positive driver” of user and investment demand for X. The stakes for X and Musk, the suit claims, could not be higher, with Musk’s complaint citing lower market value and layoffs within Grok’s team. Without relief, Musk may never be able to fairly compete, Musk argues.

Musk’s suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges violations of federal and California antitrust and unfair competition laws. In addition to billions in damages, Musk is seeking a permanent injunction blocking Apple’s deal with OpenAI to exclusively integrate ChatGPT on its devices and software.

OpenAI, responding to Ars Technica, dismissed the filing as part of Musk’s “ongoing pattern of harassment.” Apple declined to comment.

Whether a court finds Apple and OpenAI have illegally entrenched their market power, or granted a generative AI “godsend” to OpenAI, could determine not only the fate of Musk’s Grok, but also the degree of competition the next phase of AI development will see.