Musk drops Apple from his antitrust case as OpenAI heads to trial

Elon Musk’s X Corp and SpaceXAI LLC asked a Texas federal judge on September 14 to throw out their own antitrust claims against Apple, and to do it with prejudice. Their three page motion says the plaintiffs have “resolved their claims in this Action against Defendant Apple Inc.” Every claim against OpenAI stays where it is.

The motion runs under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(2), and it records that Apple does not oppose it. But nothing in the three pages explains what “resolved” means. There’s no settlement figure, no licence, no admission, and no word from either company about money changing hands.

With prejudice is the part that matters, because Musk’s companies can’t bring these claims against Apple again. So the App Store theory that started the case is closed as far as Apple is concerned. OpenAI gets no such relief, and the filing is blunt about it.

For the avoidance of doubt, Plaintiffs do not seek to dismiss any of their claims against Defendants OpenAI Foundation (f/k/a OpenAI, Inc.); OpenAI, L.L.C.; and OpenAI OpCo, LLC.

Plaintiffs’ Motion to Voluntarily Dismiss Claims Against Defendant Apple Inc., filed 14 September 2026

That leaves three OpenAI entities as the only defendants in case 4:25-cv-00914-P, in the Northern District of Texas. Judge Mark Pittman pushed the trial back in April, from October 19, 2026 to January 11, 2027, according to the docket. Ars Technica put the narrowed case at trial this fall. But the scheduling order says January.

Date	Docket	What the court recorded
25 Aug 2025	ECF 1	Complaint filed against Apple and three OpenAI entities
16 Apr 2026	ECF 202	Trial adjourned from 19 Oct 2026 to 11 Jan 2027
13 May 2026	ECF 274	Apple must produce its AI policies, broader request denied
14 Aug 2026	ECF 380	Caption amended, X.AI LLC becomes SpaceXAI LLC
14 Sep 2026	ECF 385	Apple claims dismissed with prejudice, OpenAI claims kept

The complaint landed in August 2025, after Apple built ChatGPT into Apple Intelligence. Musk’s side told the court the two firms had “locked up markets to maintain their monopolies and prevent innovators like X and xAI from competing”, as Engadget reported. Musk also accused Apple of making it “impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store”, Ars Technica reported.

That blocking claim always had an awkward fact sitting beside it. Both DeepSeek and Perplexity spent time at the top of the App Store charts after the Apple deal, Engadget noted, while Musk’s SpaceXAI didn’t. That’s the sort of detail a defendant reads out at trial.

Musk never pinned down how much of the chatbot market the Apple deal supposedly closed off. His own range ran from 0 to 55 percent.

OpenAI’s position, as reported by Ars Technica

OpenAI’s answer was that Musk wouldn’t even “hazard a guess” at the foreclosed share, and that his 0 to 55 percent span rested on back of the envelope maths the court should reject. Ars Technica reported that exchange. The catch is that a range that wide is hard to carry to a jury.

Musk didn’t walk away empty handed, though. A magistrate judge ordered Apple in May to hand over its AI policies, while refusing to compel every document relating to them. Whatever those policies say, Musk’s lawyers now have them, which means he leaves with something even though Apple is out. 9to5Mac noted that Pittman still has to sign the proposed order.

The timing is tight, though. Motions were due the day after this filing, and the pretrial order is due on December 14. Two days before Musk dropped Apple, he was publicly backing Dario Amodei’s call to slow frontier AI development, alongside Sam Altman. Suing OpenAI and agreeing with its chief executive about safety are running in parallel for now.