Elon Musk’s X corp files to dismiss App Store favoritism case

Elon Musk has moved to dismiss its lawsuit against Apple regarding the App Store given preferential treatment to OpenAI over xAI’s apps. There are unanswered questions.

The court filing on Monday, September 14 is pretty sparse, other than the request to dismiss. It’s not yet clear if there’s some kind of settlement, or if Musk has decided his case is baseless.

OpenAI was named in the suit as well. Notably, it’s just Apple that Musk is asking the court to remove from the case, and OpenAI will need to fight two major legal battles with industry titans at the same time.

Apple and OpenAI were sued by Elon Musk’s xAI, now owned by SpaceX, due to alleged anticompetitive practices. The trial hasn’t been going well for Musk so far, as it was accused of destroying and withholding evidence previously.

The suit alleging preferential treatment has been sketchy from the beginning. As Musk’s own Grok noted when asked by a social media user, other companies other than OpenAI have been on the top of the App Store.

DeepSeek was in the App Store top spot in January 2025. Perplexity followed on July 18, 2025. Both happened after the June 2024 OpenAI and Apple partnership.

Further complicating the suit, app data aggregator SensorTower has also noted that Grok was on the peak App Store spot on February 18, 2025 and February 19, 2025 after Grok-3 was made free.

The case has been moving at a snail’s pace since it was brought on August 2025. In May 2026, SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi was brought in as a document custodian.

Current Apple CEO Tim Cook was also requested as a custodian, but that was denied.

And, more recently, a judge has ruled that Elon Musk’s emails must be entered into the record. It’s still not clear what has triggered Musk’s request.

We have reached out to Apple and X corp for more details. We are not expecting a response from either, but a return call from Apple is more likely.