Elon Musk is not going to be able to dismiss his lawsuit against Apple as easily as he may have hoped. Musk filed to have his App Store dispute with Apple dismissed, but crucially not the simultaneous one with OpenAI. Now the judge is demanding to be told what's going on.

Musk's suit was a nonsense one claiming that Apple basically rigs App Store charts and features to favor its partner OpenAI's ChatGPT, and exclude X's Grok. It was entirely and demonstrably baseless, but Musk persisted, until he didn't. On September 14, 2026, Musk filed to have the case against Apple dismissed.

As AppleInsider noted, there were many unanswered questions and it was far from clear why Musk had done this. Now according to Politico, OpenAI wants Musk and X to be compelled to explain the dismissal request. OpenAI filed this request as an emergency motion and the court has accepted it.

Consequently Judge Mark Pittman has now ordered Musk to produce any and all agreements he may have made with Apple to settle out of court. The court order requires Musk's X and SpaceX firms to respond no later than noon on September 17. The judge also says that Apple is allowed to file a response by the same deadline, but is not compelled.

It's not clear yet what can happen after that deadline, or even whether Musk will actually be truthful about the reasons. That's because he has previously been accused of destroying and withholding evidence. While it's also still not clear whether Musk and Apple settled out of court, it is clear why OpenAI is fighting the dismissal request.

Unless OpenAI can get itself dismissed from the case as well, it will be facing two significant legal battles at the same time. Alongside this nonsense one against Musk, OpenAI is facing the much more serious and seemingly substantiated accusation of trade secret theft from Apple.