Apple’s App Store Faces Antitrust Lawsuit, But xAI Struggles to Gather Evidence Abroad
What You Need to Know
- Singapore rejected xAI’s evidence requests as overbroad, imprecisely identified, and seeking document categories rather than specific records.
- South Korea previously rejected similar xAI requests targeting Kakao, suggesting a structural problem across jurisdictions, not isolated incidents.
- XAI claims Apple and OpenAI colluded to favor ChatGPT on the App Store and that Apple prevents X from becoming a super app.
- Singapore argued antitrust claims fall outside Hague Convention scope, potentially limiting xAI’s international evidence-gathering strategy regardless of request precision.
xAI’s lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI is running into a pattern: foreign courts keep rejecting its attempts to gather evidence, and the reasons are starting to sound repetitive.
Singapore’s Attorney-General’s Chambers declined to approve Hague Convention requests targeting Gojek, Grab, GrabTaxi, and WeChat, telling the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas that the requests were overbroad, imprecisely identified, and sought categories of documents rather than specific records. Some company names xAI listed didn’t even match Singapore’s business registry. The phrase used was “fishing expedition,” which is a formal basis for rejection under the Hague framework, not just a rhetorical jab.
This is the second country to push back. South Korea rejected a similar request targeting Kakao earlier this year. Two rejections from two different jurisdictions on similar grounds suggests the problem is structural, not incidental.
What xAI Is Actually Arguing
The underlying suit makes two claims: that Apple and OpenAI colluded to give ChatGPT preferential treatment on the App Store, and that Apple’s App Store policies deliberately prevent X from becoming a super app. The super app theory is why xAI wanted documents from Asian platforms like Grab and WeChat, which are the most cited examples of apps that bundle payments, messaging, and services in ways that X aspires to replicate.
Singapore also flagged that antitrust and unfair competition claims fall outside what the Hague Convention is designed to cover, which is a more fundamental objection than just document specificity. If that interpretation holds elsewhere, xAI’s international evidence-gathering strategy may have a ceiling regardless of how precisely it drafts future requests.
The lawsuit is filed in the Northern District of Texas, a venue known for plaintiff-friendly procedural outcomes in tech cases. Getting the case filed there is one thing. Building an evidentiary record across multiple reluctant foreign jurisdictions is proving to be a different problem entirely.
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