Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, Google sued over AI slowdown deal

The lawsuit traces the alleged coordination to a specific chain of public statements. It says the coordination largely took place on Sept. 12, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging industrywide cooperation on decelerating advancements in favor of safety measures, and that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk and Google DeepMind co-founder and chair Demis Hassabis each publicly responded in agreement that same day. The plaintiffs also point to a July 2026 statement signed by high-ranking employees from several leading AI labs, which acknowledged the "intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow" development and called on the government to support a global effort to slow automated AI development.

The case sits against a broader political backdrop the article describes. President Donald Trump rejected calls for regulation and said he is forming an AI task force and will appoint an "AI czar," while Sen. Josh Hawley said at a recent Senate hearing that "there is no world" in which he would give the most powerful companies an antitrust exemption to collaborate. In his essay, Amodei acknowledged potential antitrust challenges and wrote that a narrow waiver for certain kinds of safety conversations from the U.S. government would be helpful, while Altman said OpenAI welcomes a federal framework but does not believe it needs an antitrust exemption or legislation to begin the work.

The outcome is likely to hinge on whether the plaintiffs can show that the public statements and the July 2026 statement crossed from individual safety advocacy into an agreement. The plaintiffs say they do not object to companies individually deciding to slow their own progress, but argue antitrust laws forbid substituting collective restraint for individual accountability. How the court treats that line, and whether the government's stance shifts, could shape how openly rival AI labs discuss shared safety standards going forward.