Elon Musk Slams Apple-Google Gemini Deal: “Unreasonable Concentration of Power” (Jan 2026 Update)

Elon Musk is definitely not sending a congratulatory gift basket to Cupertino or Mountain View today. As of Tuesday, January 13, 2026, the billionaire has slammed the new Apple-Google Gemini deal as “unreasonable.”

The thing is, Musk’s timing isn’t a coincidence. Or nothing. Let’s be real, his own AI firm, xAI, is already in the middle of a massive legal brawl with Apple and OpenAI over their previous ChatGPT tie-up.² And here’s the kicker—he’s calling this latest alliance an “unreasonable concentration of power” because Google already owns Android and Chrome.³ Those too.

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The “Tech Titan Clash” Log: Field Notes

It’s an ongoing situation where the battle for your phone’s “brain” just got a lot more expensive.

• The Billion-Dollar Bill: Apple is reportedly paying Google roughly 1 billion a year for the privilege of using Gemini.⁴ The thing is, this is just a “temporary fix” while Apple tries to finish its own in-house AI. And then there’s the Siri overhaul—expect to see the Gemini-powered Siri land around March 2026 with the iOS 26.4 update.⁵

• xAI’s Revenge: Musk’s xAI is currently suing Apple, claiming the App Store is basically a walled garden that keeps rivals like Grok from being #1.⁶ The thing is, this lawsuit just survived a dismissal attempt, so it’s actually moving forward.⁷

• The “Privacy” Shield: Apple is playing it cool. They insist that while Google’s Gemini is providing the “foundation,” your data is still locked away in Apple’s Private Cloud Compute.⁸ Or so they say.

• Alphabet’s Win: On the back of this news, Google (Alphabet) just surged past a 4 trillion market cap.⁹ The thing is, it actually briefly overtook Apple in value for the first time in years.

AI Assistant Power Rankings (Early 2026)

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[Image showing a three-way split screen: Siri with a Gemini-inspired glow, Grok with a “lawsuit pending” stamp, and ChatGPT with an “optional” tag]

And Here’s the Kicker…

Musk isn’t just complaining for the sake of it.¹⁰ The thing is, he has floated the idea of launching an “X Phone” again if Apple keeps locking out Grok.¹¹ Let’s be real, he’s already burning through1 billion a month on xAI’s data centers.¹² And then there’s the international mess—Grok was recently banned in Indonesia and Malaysia over image generation concerns.¹³

It’s an ongoing situation where Apple is trying to “buy” its way back into the AI race while Musk is trying to litigate his way into it.¹⁴

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End…