On September 18 local time, a federal court in the Northern District of California accepted a lawsuit. According to media reports, the plaintiffs accuse four artificial intelligence companies — Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google — of engaging in unlawful coordination to restrict the pace of AI development. The complaint shows that the case is titled Buist v. Anthropic PBC, with case number 3:26-cv-10693. The plaintiffs are subscribers to the AI services of the aforementioned companies, including Cheyenne Hunt, Florida attorney Charles Buist, Nick Spetsas and California resident Christine Bullock.
According to IT Home, the plaintiffs' legal team includes Nick Rowley, with the plaintiffs represented by Trial Lawyers for Justice.
The lawsuit stems from an article published on September 12 by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. In the piece, he called for "industry-wide coordination" to "set the pace at the frontier of AI" and "limit the unconstrained rate of AI progress," in order to allow time for safety evaluations and safeguards to keep up. Amodei also stressed that by "slowing down" he did not mean halting model training or technical progress, but rather that companies should advance capabilities at a more balanced pace and leave time to complete safety verification.
Plaintiffs accuse AI companies of unlawful coordination to restrict technological progress
The initiative subsequently received public backing from several AI industry executives. According to Global Times, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on social media: "I agree with Dario — we need to put the brakes on the pace of frontier AI advancement." Elon Musk reposted Amodei's message with the comment: "Dario is right." According to IT Home, Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis also expressed support.
The plaintiffs argue that senior executives of competing AI companies publicly endorsing the same position amounts to an agreement among firms to coordinate the pace of product improvements, in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The plaintiffs further claim that if competitors all slow the iteration speed of their AI products, consumers will receive newer products at a slower rate for the same price, and their interests are thereby harmed. The lawsuit seeks an injunction barring the companies from continuing the alleged coordinated conduct, and a court declaration that such conduct violates U.S. federal antitrust law.
In a statement, plaintiffs' attorney Nick Rowley said the case aims to ensure that "private, self-serving agreements among the world's most powerful 'for-profit' tech companies" do not cause AI to "rapidly escape human control." He said that, in the face of threats of extinction events such as nuclear war, and now the greatest risk in human history, humanity deserves ironclad guarantees; the rule of law must be established by government in a transparent, lawful manner and held accountable to the public.
According to Sina Finance, OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceXAI and Google had not responded to requests for comment as of the time of reporting.