A proposed class-action lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California claims Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google illegally agreed to slow the pace of AI development, arguing the coordination would reduce the value of paid subscriptions to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok and Gemini.
According to the Associated Press and CNN, the complaint says the alleged coordination centered on Sept. 12, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging industrywide deceleration for safety. The same day, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis each publicly responded in agreement, the suit contends. The filing also points to a July 2026 statement signed by senior employees at leading labs that cited “intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow” development and called for government support for a global slowdown of automated AI research.
Plaintiffs say they do not object to companies independently choosing to slow for safety; they argue antitrust law bars rivals from substituting “collective restraint for individual accountability.” Lead counsel Nick Rowley said private self-serving agreements among powerful AI firms should not control safety protocols. In his essay, Amodei acknowledged potential antitrust hurdles and suggested a U.S. government role or narrow waiver for safety talks; Altman later said OpenAI welcomes a federal safety framework but does not believe an antitrust exemption is required to begin that work, AP reported. The companies did not immediately comment.