In the tech world, rumors spread faster than a software update. But when you mix Elon Musk and Apple in the same sentence, things get weirdly personal. People have been buzzing about an elon musk apple deal for years, usually imagining some world-shaking merger where the iPhone finally meets the Tesla.
Honestly? Most of that is just fantasy.
💡 You might also like: Why 425 Market Street San Francisco Still Anchors the Financial District
The real story isn't about a happy handshake. It's a messy saga of missed calls, legal threats, and a very public breakup over artificial intelligence. If you want the truth about how these two giants actually interact, you have to look at the deals that didn't happen just as much as the ones that did.
That Time Apple Almost Owned Tesla
Let's rewind.
Back in 2017, Tesla was in a bad spot. Musk famously called it "production hell" while trying to get the Model 3 off the ground. He was sleeping on the factory floor, and the company was reportedly weeks away from bankruptcy. Desperate times, right?
Musk reached out to Tim Cook. He wanted to discuss Apple acquiring Tesla for about a tenth of its current value. That would have been roughly $60 billion at the time—a steal in hindsight.
But Cook didn't even take the meeting.
You’ve gotta wonder if Cook looks back on that and winces. Today, Tesla’s valuation makes $60 billion look like pocket change. Instead of a deal, we got a decade of "The Great Talent War." Musk once joked that Apple is the "Tesla Graveyard," basically saying if you don't make it at Tesla, you go work for the iPhone guys.
The salt is real.
The AI Friction: Why Musk is Suing Apple
Fast forward to right now. The latest "deal" everyone is talking about is actually a massive fight.
🔗 Read more: IRS $1b in Unclaimed 2021 Tax Refunds: Why Your Money Might Be With the Treasury
In late 2025, Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, filed a massive antitrust lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI. Why? Because of the way ChatGPT is baked into the iPhone. Musk’s legal team argues that Apple is "systematically favoring" OpenAI and creating a closed loop that keeps competitors like Grok (xAI's chatbot) out in the cold.
It’s a classic Musk move. He’s calling it an "unreasonable concentration of power."
But here’s the twist: Apple just pulled a classic Apple move. On January 12, 2026, Apple and Google dropped a bombshell joint statement. They’ve entered a multi-year partnership to put Google Gemini models inside the next generation of Siri.
The Google Twist
Apple is reportedly paying Google around $1 billion a year for this. They tried to build their own trillion-parameter model, but it just wasn't "Apple quality" yet. They even lost their head of foundation models, Ruoming Pang, to Meta.
So, they went to Google.
Musk’s reaction was exactly what you’d expect. He took to X (formerly Twitter) to blast the deal, saying it's a monopoly-style power grab because Google already owns Android and Chrome. He’s basically watching his two biggest rivals team up to keep his own AI from becoming the default on the world's most popular phone.
What This Means for Your Devices
If you're an iPhone user, don't expect to see a "Tesla App" integrated into your home screen anytime soon. The elon musk apple deal you’re seeing in the news is actually a legal battleground.
📖 Related: Sending India to America money: Why you are probably paying too much
Here is what the landscape looks like for the rest of 2026:
- Siri's New Brain: Your iPhone will soon be powered by a custom 1.2 trillion parameter Gemini model. It’s supposed to launch with iOS 26.4 this spring.
- Privacy Walls: Apple is insisting that all this AI magic happens on their "Private Cloud Compute" servers. They want the smarts of Google without giving Google your data.
- The xAI Fight: Musk isn't backing down. He’s scaling his Memphis data center to nearly 2 gigawatts. He wants Grok to be so good that Apple has to let it in, or the courts will force them to.
Actionable Insights for the AI Era
The "deal" is that there is no deal. It's a war for the "brain" of your smartphone.
If you're an investor or just a tech enthusiast, you need to watch the iOS 26.4 rollout. If the Google-powered Siri is a hit, Apple’s stock is going to moon, and Musk’s lawsuit might gain even more traction as he claims "unfair dominance."
But if it's a buggy mess? That's when Musk might actually get the meeting he wanted back in 2017.
For now, keep an eye on your App Store updates. If you see Grok suddenly getting "priority placement," you’ll know Musk’s legal team won a round. If not, the Apple-Google-OpenAI alliance is the new world order.
Check your current iOS version. If you aren't on the latest beta, you’re missing the first wave of these "Apple Intelligence" features that started this whole mess in the first place.