Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google are accused in a new lawsuit of reaching an illegal agreement to slow the development of their artificial intelligence systems.
Filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the complaint alleges that the major AI companies violated antitrust laws by coordinating efforts to decelerate development. The plaintiffs say the alleged agreement could diminish the value consumers receive from paid AI subscriptions.
The lawsuit points primarily to Sept. 12, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay calling for industrywide cooperation to slow technological advances while strengthening AI safety measures. On the same day, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis, co-founder and chair of Google DeepMind, publicly expressed agreement with Amodei’s proposals.
However, the complaint says the alleged coordination started months earlier. It cites a July 2026 statement signed by senior employees at several leading AI laboratories that recognized the “intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow” development. The statement urged the government to back a global initiative aimed at slowing automated AI progress.
The plaintiffs argue that an agreement among AI competitors to ensure their progress “should be slower than competition would otherwise produce” plainly harms consumers and has an anticompetitive effect.
Four named plaintiffs who subscribe to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok or Gemini are pursuing the case on behalf of a proposed nationwide class of other paying users of those services.
The plaintiffs say they do not object to any company independently choosing to slow its own AI development to address safety concerns. Instead, they contend that antitrust law prohibits the companies from taking a “shortcut” by agreeing to “substitute collective restraint for individual accountability.” A competitive market, they argue, encourages both responsibility and meaningful technological progress.
“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 plaintiffs’ lead attorney.
Representatives of Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and SpaceXAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
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In his essay proposing a slowdown, Amodei acknowledged that the plan could raise antitrust concerns. He wrote that the U.S. government could mediate, or at least enable, discussions among AI laboratories. Although government officials would not have to participate directly, he said they would need to provide a “narrow waiver for certain kinds of safety conversations.”
Altman responded on social media that OpenAI supports a “federal framework that sets consistent safety requirements.” At the same time, he said, “we do not believe we need to wait for an antitrust exemption or legislation to begin the work of providing this confidence.”
The latest debate over the pace of AI development has been fueled by growing fears that advanced systems could evade human control. Yet AI leaders have discussed shared safety standards and other forms of coordination for years, arguing that safety should remain a central priority.
The plaintiffs stress that they are not challenging the companies’ right to ask Congress, the White House or other government agencies to establish AI regulations. They also say they do not oppose the companies seeking an antitrust exemption.
Still, securing that type of cooperation with the federal government could prove difficult.
President Donald Trump has rejected calls for AI regulation on social media, describing efforts to restrict the technology as part of a “conspiracy.” He questioned why industry leaders would seek rules that, he said, “if strongly implemented, will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy.” On Saturday, Trump said he was creating an AI task force and would appoint an “AI czar,” but offered few details.
The Trump administration has repeatedly emphasized its goal of helping U.S. AI companies surpass and outperform Chinese competitors. Several Democratic leaders and candidates have advocated sweeping AI regulations, while Republicans have generally aligned with Trump’s position.
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