Source: CBS News

The complaint, filed Sept. 19, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google coordinated on efforts to slow AI development and thereby violated U.S. antitrust laws. Plaintiffs claim the coordination mostly occurred on Sept. 12, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging industrywide cooperation to decelerate technological advancement in favor of enhanced safety, and that rivals Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis confirmed agreement the same day according to the complaint.

Lawyers for four named plaintiffs — subscribers who pay for services including ChatGPT, Claude, Grok or Gemini — are bringing the action as a proposed nationwide class, saying the alleged coordination would reduce the value consumers get for paid AI subscriptions. The complaint quotes Amodei acknowledging possible antitrust issues in his essay and seeking a government role to "mediate or at least enable" cross-lab safety discussions via a narrow waiver; plaintiffs’ lead attorney Nick Rowley is quoted warning that private self-serving agreements could let AI safety be controlled by for-profit firms. Representatives for the named companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and the suit frames the conduct as an unlawful agreement among competitors that limits competition and harms subscribers, with the plaintiffs seeking relief on behalf of the proposed class.