“This publicly announced pinky promise” — one plaintiff’s blunt take on the AI slowdown pact, now in court.
Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google are facing a federal antitrust lawsuit alleging that public statements made by their leaders earlier this month amounted to an illegal agreement between competitors. The complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California on Friday, centres on remarks by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who publicly called for “industry-wide coordination” to “pace the frontier” of AI advancement — a call that drew quick public agreement from SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis.
The Legal Argument
The lawsuit alleges this coordinated public agreement violates the Sherman Act, arguing that rival companies effectively formed an unlawful pact to restrict competition rather than compete independently on safety standards. The suit was filed on behalf of four plaintiffs — lawyer Cheyenne Hunt, Florida attorneys Charles Buist and Nick Spetsas, and California resident Christine Bullock — who have signalled intent to seek class-action status. Attorney Nick Rowley, representing the plaintiffs, said the case aims to prevent private corporate arrangements from sidelining regulatory oversight, arguing that safeguards against what he called an “extinction event threat” should be established transparently by government, not negotiated privately between competing companies.
The Plaintiffs’ Core Argument
Hunt laid out the allegation in detail on X, claiming the four companies had been meeting privately since July to plan a response to mounting public pressure for AI regulation, and that Amodei’s essay calling for a slowdown, followed within hours by public agreement from Musk and Altman, was choreographed rather than coincidental. Her central claim: that the arrangement functions as an agreement not to compete on safety standards precisely when lawmakers were gaining momentum toward binding regulation — and that it gave House Speaker Mike Johnson cover to adjourn the House before binding AI legislation could pass. Hunt argued that decisions with stakes this large shouldn’t be made by “four CEOs… behind closed doors,” and that rules “written by the industry, for the industry, policed by the industry” amount to self-regulation rather than genuine safety standards.
What The Companies Have Said
The article does not include a response from Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI or Google to the specific antitrust allegations. It is worth noting the lawsuit’s claims are allegations made in a civil filing and have not been adjudicated by a court.
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