Good morning. In honor of Perplexity’s unsolicited $34.5 billion bid to acquire Google’s Chrome web browser amid U.S. antitrust scrutiny—a figure well beyond the San Francisco AI startup’s $18 billion valuation!—five things I’d like to place an unsolicited bid on with someone else’s money:
- A Supreme-branded clay brick
- The spite house blocking Mark Zuckerberg from a more contiguous Palo Alto compound
- The guitar Billy Corgan used to record the solo of “Cherub Rock”
- The leather moto jacket worn by Jensen Huang on the December 2017 cover of Fortune magazine
- Marc Andreessen’s Malibu pad
But please, Marc—keep the disco ball. Today’s tech news below. —Andrew Nusca
Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Fortune Tech? Drop a line here.
Apple has a new AI problem: Elon Musk
Apple’s stock is down nearly 20% so far in 2025, partly as a result of investor disappointment around Apple’s artificial intelligence efforts.
Now Apple has a fresh AI-related headache—but this time, it comes courtesy of Elon Musk, who’s threatening “immediate legal action” if the tech giant does not remove OpenAI’s ChatGPT from the top of its App Store rankings.
It all unfolded late Monday, when the billionaire Tesla CEO took to the social network he bought for $44 billion, X, to level pointed accusations at Apple and its App Store practices.
Musk alleged that Apple’s ranking system “makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store,” claiming this amounts to a “clear antitrust violation” and vowing that his artificial intelligence startup, xAI, “will take immediate legal action.”
At the heart of Musk’s complaint is Grok, the AI chatbot launched by his xAI startup as a direct competitor to ChatGPT.
As of Tuesday morning, ChatGPT holds the coveted top spot among free apps in Apple’s App Store in the United States, while Grok sits at sixth. (For context: Google’s Gemini chatbot trails far behind, ranking 57th.)
Musk alleges improper favoritism, especially given Apple’s high-profile partnership with OpenAI, announced in June 2024, that integrates ChatGPT more deeply with iPhones, iPads, and Macs.
Musk’s attack on Apple arrives in a climate of mounting regulatory scrutiny.
Apple has yet to publicly respond to Musk’s latest accusations, though OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly fired back at Musk’s claims.
“This is a remarkable claim given what I have heard alleged that Elon does to manipulate X to benefit himself and his own companies and harm his competitors and people he doesn’t like,” Altman wrote on X. —Dave Smith
Russia believed to be responsible for recent U.S. court hack
U.S. investigators have reportedly uncovered evidence that Russia is “at least partly responsible” for the recent hack of a computer system used by federal courts.
The system is used to manage court documents, some of which include sensitive information that could reveal the names of sources and suspects involved in national security cases.
According to a New York Times report, investigators weren’t specific about which entity in Russia was behind the intrusion, nor did they say which other countries, if any, might be involved.
An internal memo reviewed by the Times notes that Justice Department officials, clerks, and judges were recently informed that the threat actors had “compromised sealed records”—including those with links abroad—and advised to immediately remove sensitive documents from the document management system.
Adjustments to which documents are available in PACER, the public database for court material, have also been made. (As they say in Russia: God helps those who help themselves.)
The courts’ electronic filing system has been criticized for years for its lack of security, and it has been the target of previous cyberattacks, including in 2021, after which federal investigators were instructed to record and deliver case information by hand.
U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to meet with Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. —AN
CoreWeave shares fall 10% as margins are squeezed
The price of CoreWeave stock dropped 10%, to about $133, on Tuesday after the AI cloud computing company delivered a weak earnings outlook with thinner-than-expected profit margins.
The Northern New Jersey company—which made its market debut in March of this year in the biggest tech IPO since 2021 and continues to ride the AI boom to great heights—posted massive losses, to the tune of nearly $131 million for the quarter ended in June.
That’s 20 times its previous quarter and quite a bit higher than analysts had expected.
“We are scaling rapidly as we look to meet the unprecedented demand for AI,” CEO Michael Intrator said.
Like its much bigger tech peers Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft, CoreWeave has certainly not been shy about spending money to meet AI demand, including its $9 billion acquisition of data center operator Core Scientific and its $6 billion commitment to build out a data center in Lancaster, Penn.
Still, CoreWeave managed to triple its Q2 revenue to $1.21 billion, handily beating Wall Street’s expectations. The company also brightened its full-year revenue outlook to about $5.25 billion as customers use its infrastructure for AI inference. —AN
More tech
—OpenAI’s own Neuralink. The AI pioneer is reportedly planning to back a rival firm called Merge Labs, cofounded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
—Apple, Google lose in court. Fortnite developer Epic notches an antitrust win in Australia.
—Terraform Labs cofounder pleads guilty. Charges of conspiracy and wire fraud for Do Kwon after algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD's $40 billion collapse.
—India’s first AI unicorn files for IPO. Fractal Analytics hopes to raise about $560 million, valuing the company at more than $3.5 billion.
—Meta’s Threads has 400 million users. The social media service still trails X, but the gap is shrinking.
—Match Group settles with FTC. A $14 million settlement for the dating app giant’s deceptive marketing and subscription activity.
—Neobanks vs. big banks. Singapore challengers GXS, MariBank, and Trust Bank post losses as incumbents DBS, UOB, OCBC dig in their heels.
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