Musk's Apple AI app claim challenged by DeepSeek success
Elon Musk has once again ignited a firestorm in the tech world, publicly accusing Apple of creating an “unequivocal antitrust violation” by allegedly making it “impossible” for any AI company other than OpenAI to achieve the top spot in its App Store. The billionaire CEO of xAI, developer of the Grok AI chatbot, has threatened immediate legal action, claiming Apple’s policies unfairly favor OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Yet, a recent success story from a different corner of the AI landscape directly challenges Musk’s assertion: the swift ascent of DeepSeek’s AI assistant.
Musk’s latest broadside comes amidst a deepening rivalry with OpenAI, a company he co-founded before a contentious departure and subsequent lawsuit over its shift to a for-profit model. He posits that Apple’s deep partnership with OpenAI, which includes integrating ChatGPT into its forthcoming Apple Intelligence features across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, constitutes preferential treatment. While Grok has seen a rapid climb to fifth place overall in the App Store and second in the Productivity category, bolstered by the release of Grok 4 and its newfound free access, it still trails OpenAI’s dominant chatbot. Musk has also expressed frustration over Apple’s refusal to feature X (formerly Twitter) or Grok in its coveted “Must Have” section, implying a political bias.
However, the narrative of OpenAI’s unassailable App Store dominance was distinctly challenged earlier this year. In January 2025, DeepSeek’s AI Assistant app surged to the very top of Apple’s App Store charts, briefly eclipsing even ChatGPT. This meteoric rise saw DeepSeek claiming the number one free app position in 57 countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, and securing a spot in the Top 10 free apps across 111 countries on the App Store.
DeepSeek, developed by a Chinese AI startup, has rapidly gained international recognition for its powerful, open-source large language models, including DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-R1. Positioned as a cost-effective, often free alternative, it boasts performance comparable to GPT-4 in various benchmarks, particularly excelling in mathematical reasoning and coding tasks. The app experienced “explosive growth” in early 2025, accumulating tens of millions of downloads across both Apple and Google app stores. While DeepSeek’s journey has not been without its challenges, including reports of content censorship and a past database exposure, its ability to disrupt the perceived duopoly at the top of the App Store offers a compelling counterpoint to Musk’s claims.
DeepSeek’s success underscores a dynamic and fiercely competitive AI app market that extends beyond the immediate rivalry between OpenAI and xAI. It suggests that while platform partnerships and editorial features can provide a significant boost, innovative technology and user adoption can still propel an app to the pinnacle of popularity. This ongoing debate also highlights the broader scrutiny Apple faces regarding its App Store policies, which have previously drawn antitrust allegations and regulatory fines from various global bodies. Ultimately, DeepSeek’s unexpected triumph complicates the narrative of a rigged system, demonstrating that the path to App Store supremacy for non-ChatGPT AI apps, though challenging, is far from impossible.