Lawsuit accuses major companies of coordinating to slow down artificial intelligence development

A new lawsuit alleges that Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX AI, and Google entered into an illegal agreement to slow the pace of artificial intelligence development at each company.

The lawsuit, filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, states that the leading AI companies violated antitrust laws by agreeing to coordinate efforts to slow down development, arguing that such actions would reduce the value consumers receive for paid AI subscriptions.

The complaint contends that much of the coordination occurred on September 12, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an article urging industry-wide cooperation to slow progress in order to strengthen safety measures. On the same day, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceX AI CEO Elon Musk, and Google co-founder and Chairman Demis Hassabis publicly endorsed Amodei’s proposals.

However, the lawsuit also claims that the coordination began taking shape months earlier. It points to a statement issued in July 2026, signed by senior employees from several leading AI laboratories, which expressed awareness of the “intense competitive pressure not to slow down” unilateral development. The statement called on the government to support a global effort to slow the development of autonomous AI.