A new lawsuit in the United States accuses Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google of illegally coordinating efforts to slow the pace of artificial intelligence development.

Filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, the lawsuit alleges that the companies’ coordination could violate antitrust laws by limiting competition and reducing the value consumers receive from paid AI subscriptions.

The complaint focuses on September 12, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay calling for industrywide cooperation to slow the development of advanced AI in favour of stronger safety measures. The lawsuit says OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis publicly responded to the proposal that day and expressed support for aspects of the idea.

The plaintiffs argue that competitors should not collectively decide to restrain AI development, even when the stated goal is to address safety concerns. Four named plaintiffs, who subscribe to services including ChatGPT, Claude, Grok and Gemini, filed the case on behalf of a proposed nationwide class of paid subscribers.

The lawsuit also points to earlier discussions among AI industry employees about the competitive pressure involved in slowing development independently.

Amodei had acknowledged possible antitrust concerns in his proposal and suggested that government involvement or a limited legal framework could help facilitate safety discussions between AI companies.

The allegations have not been established in court, and the case could shape future debates over AI safety, competition and cooperation between leading technology companies.