OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and SpaceXAI Hit With New Antitrust Lawsuit

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and SpaceXAI are facing a new antitrust lawsuit accusing the leading artificial intelligence companies of illegally coordinating efforts to slow AI development.

The lawsuit was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of paid users of ChatGPT, Claude, Grok and Gemini. The plaintiffs argue that coordination among the companies could reduce competition and diminish the value consumers receive from their AI subscriptions.

The complaint focuses on discussions that intensified on September 12, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for industrywide cooperation to slow AI development in favor of additional safety measures. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk and Google DeepMind chair Demis Hassabis publicly responded to the proposal.

The lawsuit seeks to represent a nationwide class of paying AI customers and alleges that private coordination among the companies could violate U.S. antitrust law.

Representatives for Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and SpaceXAI had not immediately responded to requests for comment as the case became public Saturday.

The lawsuit is a new U.S. legal development this weekend, not a recycled older incident.