AI Antitrust Lawsuit Targets Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, SpaceXAI

A new lawsuit filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleges Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google illegally agreed to slow AI development, violating antitrust laws and reducing value for paid subscribers. The lawsuit claims coordination occurred on September 12, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging industrywide cooperation on slowing advancements for safety, and OpenAI's Sam Altman, SpaceXAI's Elon Musk and Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis publicly agreed that day. Plaintiffs, who pay for subscriptions to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok or Gemini, seek class-action status, arguing the agreement has an anticompetitive effect on consumers Lead attorney Nick Rowley said AI could spin out of control if safety protocols are controlled by private agreements among for-profit tech companies. Amodei acknowledged potential antitrust issues, suggesting the US government issue a narrow waiver for safety conversations, while Altman welcomed a federal framework but said no exemption was needed to begin safety work. The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday