Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and SpaceXAI accused of illegal pact to slow down AI development

From the Newshound archive · first published 20 September 2026.

A lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California accuses four of the world's leading AI companies of conspiring to deliberately hold back their own technological development, to the detriment of paying customers. Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceXAI are named as defendants, with the complaint alleging coordinated deceleration in breach of federal antitrust law. Lead attorney Nick Rowley warns that leaving AI safety "controlled by private self-serving agreements between the world's most powerful 'for profit' technology companies" puts the public at risk.

The alleged agreement traces back to a 12 September essay by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, in which he called for an industry-wide slowdown on safety grounds.