ANTHROPIC, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google face a federal antitrust lawsuit alleging the companies agreed to coordinate a slowdown in artificial intelligence development, potentially reducing competition and the value of paid AI services.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, claims the four companies violated antitrust laws by agreeing to slow the pace of their respective AI development.
AP reported on Sunday that the plaintiffs argue that the alleged coordination would reduce the value consumers receive from subscriptions to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok and Gemini.
The lawsuit centres on Sept 12, when Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei published an essay calling for industry-wide cooperation to slow AI advances in favour of stronger safety measures.
According to the complaint, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, SpaceXAI chief executive Elon Musk and Google DeepMind co-founder and chairman Demis Hassabis publicly responded to Amodei's proposals that day in agreement.
The plaintiffs also allege that discussions about slowing AI development began months earlier, pointing to a July statement signed by senior employees from several leading AI labs that acknowledged the “intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow” development.
The statement called for government support for a global effort to slow automated AI development.
The plaintiffs said they do not object to the companies independently deciding to slow development for safety reasons, but argue that antitrust law prohibits competitors from collectively agreeing to restrain competition.
“It is clear that an agreement among the chief rivals in AI that their progress ‘should be slower than competition would otherwise produce has an anticompetitive effect on consumers,’” the plaintiffs said in the complaint.
Lawyers representing four named plaintiffs who subscribe to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok or Gemini filed the lawsuit on behalf of a proposed nationwide class of other paid subscribers.
“AI will quickly spin out of human control and could kill us all if we allow AI safety and protocol ... to be controlled by private self-serving agreements between the world’s most powerful ‘for profit’ technology companies,” said Nick Rowley, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs.
Representatives for Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and SpaceXAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment, according to the Associated Press.
Amodei acknowledged potential antitrust concerns in his essay, saying the US government could mediate or enable discussions between AI companies and suggesting it could “issue a narrow waiver for certain kinds of safety conversations”.
Altman said OpenAI supported a “federal framework that sets consistent safety requirements”, but added: “we do not believe we need to wait for an antitrust exemption or legislation to begin the work of providing this confidence.”
The lawsuit comes amid growing debate over how AI companies should address safety risks while maintaining competition. Several industry leaders have recently called for a slower pace of development, while others have opposed coordinated restrictions. - September 20, 2026
