Craig Federighi involved in Musk’s Apple-OpenAI lawsuit

Apple software chief Craig Federighi will participate in xAI’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI over the App Store’s treatment of Grok, but Tim Cook apparently won’t.

In August 2025, Elon Musk’s xAI sued Apple and OpenAI, claiming that a partnership between the two was affecting Grok’s position in the App Store. Specifically, Musk’s xAI accused Apple of bias in its App Store rankings, preventing Grok and X from getting the top spot in favor of ChatGPT.

As the antitrust lawsuit continues, Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, is now embroiled in the case.

In a filing filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on May 13, spotted by 9to5MacX Corp and xAI attempted to make Craig Federighi and CEO Tim Cook the custodians. These are the parties most likely to have relevant information or sufficient access to details for the trial to proceed.

The argument was that Cook and Federighi made “high-level strategic decisions regarding the Apple-OpenAI deal,” the filing said.

The court agreed that Federighi should be a custodian and that the plaintiffs successfully argued that he could hold “unique relevant evidence.” This includes information relating to Apple’s integration of OpenAI services into Apple Intelligence, as the SVP was almost certainly a key decision maker.

However, although there was an attempt to make Cook also a trustee, the court rejected this proposal. The court says there is no explanation as to how Cook would have unique relevant evidence that has not already been produced, nor that Federighi would be able to provide.

Following this designation, Federighi must provide discoverable responsive documents by June 17, 2026.

Employee Rules, Consumer Use

Even though xAI was partially successful in its claims, it was certainly not the case in others.

Late in the filing, the court explains that xAI asked it to force Apple to produce all internal policy documents regarding employee use of generative AI and chatbots.

However, the court disputes the need for this because it is unclear how Apple’s internal policies regarding employee use of AI would relate to the antitrust allegations. Employee use of AI has no direct impact on App Store rankings, the court proposes.

xAI’s reasoning was that Apple touted the security of OpenAI products, but was concerned enough to impose limits and rules on how employees used them. The court disagreed because Apple’s imposition of guardrails on employee use does not mean that Apple is “misrepresenting” the security and privacy of the programs to the public.

The court therefore rejected the request for documents.

Not all requests came from xAI either. OpenAI has decided to require Musk to submit his emails to Tesla and SpaceX, along with other communications, by June 3.

This request was granted by the court.