A new antitrust lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California accuses Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google of orchestrating an illegal agreement to decelerate the pace of their artificial intelligence development, according to reports from CBS News, ABC7 Chicago, and ABC News. The complaint asserts that the coordination diminishes the value that consumers receive for paid AI subscriptions to services such as ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Gemini.
Antitrust Lawsuit Targets Leading AI Labs Over Alleged Slowdown Deal
The legal action was brought by four named plaintiffs representing a proposed nationwide class of paid subscribers. Nick Rowley, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, criticized the tech industry leaders in statements reported by CBS News, ABC7 Chicago, and ABC News: 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.
The lawsuit clarifies that the plaintiffs do not object to companies independently slowing their progress for safety, but contend that antitrust laws prohibit substituting collective restraint for individual accountability. Representatives for Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and SpaceXAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Origins of the Alleged Coordination
According to the complaint detailed by ABC7 Chicago and ABC News, the coordinated effort largely crystallized when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay advocating for industrywide cooperation to decelerate advancements in favor of safety measures. Amodei warned that rogue AI agents could potentially take over the internet within six months and outlined a three-point plan aimed at pacing frontier technology.
The lawsuit states that rival executives—including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk, and Google DeepMind co-founder and chair Demis Hassabis—publicly responded in agreement on the same day. Furthermore, the complaint alleges that coordination began months earlier, pointing to a statement signed by high-ranking employees from several leading labs acknowledging intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow development. In his initial essay, Amodei acknowledged potential antitrust challenges and suggested that the U.S. government should mediate cross-lab discussions or issue a narrow waiver for safety conversations. Altman responded on social media that OpenAI welcomes consistent safety requirements but believes an antitrust exemption or legislation is unnecessary to begin the work.
Political Scrutiny and Legislative Pushback
The controversy surrounding industry pacing and antitrust exemptions has drawn attention from lawmakers. As reported by ABC7 Chicago and ABC News, while Democratic leaders and candidates have called for sweeping action on AI regulation, Republican lawmakers have largely mirrored the position of Donald Trump. During a recent Senate hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) stated that there is no world
in which he would grant the world’s most powerful companies an antitrust exemption to collaborate, arguing that such measures would enable collusion and stifle competition.