AI firms sued over alleged antitrust agreement to slow development
Four major artificial-intelligence companies are facing a class-action lawsuit accusing them of coordinating a slowdown of AI progress, which plaintiffs say violates U.S. antitrust law and harms paid subscribers.
A lawsuit filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleges that Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google colluded to decelerate the development of their respective AI systems. The complaint contends the companies coordinated their efforts after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay on September 12 calling for industry-wide cooperation on safety, to which OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk and DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis publicly responded in agreement. Plaintiffs, who pay for subscriptions to services such as ChatGPT, Claude, Grok and Gemini, claim the alleged agreement reduces consumer value and breaches antitrust statutes that prohibit collective restraint.
The filing cites internal statements from July 2026 indicating senior staff at several AI labs recognized intense competitive pressure not to slow development unilaterally, and urged government support for a global slowdown effort. While the plaintiffs do not oppose individual companies choosing to slow progress for safety, they argue that a coordinated approach circumvents the competitive market’s role in ensuring accountability.
"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, lead attorney for the plaintiffs.
Representatives for the four companies have not responded to requests for comment. In his essay, Amodei acknowledged possible antitrust concerns and suggested the U.S. government could mediate or issue a narrow waiver for safety discussions. Altman later said OpenAI supports a federal framework with consistent safety requirements but does not believe an antitrust exemption is needed to begin work.
The lawsuit does not challenge the companies’ calls for broader AI regulation or an antitrust exemption, but it argues that any such collaboration must follow legal channels rather than private agreements. The filing arrives amid ongoing political debate over AI oversight, with some officials opposing regulation and others urging stricter antitrust enforcement.