A major antitrust class action lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California accuses Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google of entering into an illegal agreement to coordinate and decelerate the pace of their artificial intelligence development. The plaintiffs, represented by lead attorney Nick Rowley, contend that this alleged anti-competitive coordination deprives paid subscribers of ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Gemini of the true value and rapid technical progress they would otherwise receive in a fully competitive market.
According to the complaint in Buist et al. v. Anthropic PBC et al., the explicit coordination culminated after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay advocating for an industrywide slowdown in favor of enhanced safety measures. That same day, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk, and Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis publicly voiced agreement with Amodei’s proposal. The lawsuit alleges that joint discussions had been taking shape months prior, citing a statement signed by high-ranking tech employees acknowledging intense competitive pressures against unilaterally slowing development.
While the plaintiffs do not object to individual companies independently prioritizing safety over speed, they argue that federal antitrust laws strictly prohibit tech rivals from taking the shortcut of substituting collective restraint for independent accountability. Though Amodei previously acknowledged potential antitrust hurdles and suggested a narrow government waiver for safety conversations, Altman publicly asserted that labs did not need to wait for an antitrust exemption to align on safety efforts.
The legal action comes amidst sharp political friction regarding tech regulation. President Donald Trump publicly rejected calls for federal limits on artificial intelligence, characterizing regulatory slowdowns as a conspiracy that could bankrupt American firms while handing an advantage to Chinese competitors. Furthermore, lawmakers including Senator Josh Hawley have strongly opposed granting mega-cap tech leaders any antitrust exemptions, warning against corporate collusion under the guise of safety. The four tech giants have not yet responded to requests for comment regarding the litigation.(AP)
