Without providing evidence, Tesla’s Elon Musk accuses Apple of favoring OpenAI

Other AI apps have topped the App Store, including Grok.

8/12/25 7:40AM

On Monday night, Tesla and xAI CEO Elon Musk posted on X saying that Apple is keeping AI companies other than OpenAI from reaching the No. 1 spot in its App Store, calling it “an unequivocal antitrust violation.” Musk provided no proof of wrongdoing by Apple beyond pointing out that Apple has a partnership with OpenAI to use ChatGPT on its AI iPhones.

Other AI apps have previously ranked No. 1 among Top Free Apps on Apple’s US App Store — including xAI’s Grok. Earlier this year, Grok spent several days atop the App Store before being once again bested by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, according to Appfigures.

Top free App Store Aug 12, 2025 — Sherwood News

ChatGPT is a consumer favorite, with people choosing it over other AI assistants licensed by their companies, while Grok as recently as last month was in the news for praising Hitler. China’s DeepSeek also topped the App Store earlier this year. Both Grok and DeepSeek ranked No. 1 after Apple announced its OpenAI partnership back in 2024. Today, Grok is No. 5 while ChatGPT is No. 1.

Musk has been on a publicity push lately for Grok 4, offering it for free and advertising its image and video-generation tool Grok Imagine.

Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation.

xAI will take immediate legal action.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2025

Rani Molla & Jon Keegan22h

Amazon closes at all-time high

Fresh off strong earnings Thursday, Amazon saw its stock price end the week at a record closing high of $244.22.

The stock is up 10% so far this year.

The e-commerce and cloud giant beat analysts’ revenue and earnings, and its massive gain was responsible for more than all of the positive return delivered by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF on Friday.

Jon Keegan

24h

Microsoft, Amazon, and Google all have cumulonimbus-sized cloud backlogs

The top cloud companies can’t keep up with the searing demand for AI computing.

Rani Molla10/31/25

Google uses an AI-generated ad to sell AI search

Google is using AI video to tell consumers about its AI search tools, with a Veo 3-generated advertisement that will begin airing on TV today. In it, a cartoonish turkey uses Google’s AI Mode to plan a vacation from its farm before it’s eaten for Thanksgiving.

Like other AI ad campaigns that have opted to depict yetis or famous artworks rather than humans, Google chose a turkey as its protagonist to avoid the uncanny valley pitfall that happens when AI is used to generate human likenesses.

Google’s in-house marketing group, Google Creative Lab, developed the idea for the ad — not Google’s AI — but chose not to prominently label the ad as AI, telling The Wall Street Journal that consumers don’t actually care how the ad was made.

Exclusive | Google’s First AI Ad Avoids the Uncanny Valley by Casting a Turkey

Rani Molla10/31/25

Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft combined spent nearly $100 billion on capex last quarter

The numbers are in and tech giants Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft spent a whopping $97 billion last quarter on purchases of property and equipment. That’s nearly double what it was a year earlier as AI infrastructure costs continue to balloon and show no sign of stopping. Amazon, which reported earnings and capital expenditure spending that beat analysts’ expectations yesterday, continued to lead the pack, spending more than $35 billion on capex in the quarter that ended in September.

Note that the data we’re using here is from FactSet, which strips out finance leases when calculating capital expenditures. If those expenses were included the total would be well over $100 billion last quarter.

Rani Molla

Slicing the Pie

10/31/25

The best analyst questions from Apple’s earnings call

Apple even answered some of them!