OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind have been coordinating on safety protocols for several weeks, OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane confirmed during a Washington briefing on September 15, 2026, moving the industry toward active coalition-building on a self-regulatory AI standards body modeled on Wall Street's FINRA, though the proposed structure remains unformalized and Anthropic and Google have not publicly confirmed this specific coordination to reporters. First floated by Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis on July 14, the model would create an industry-funded, federally overseen entity that reviews models up to 30 days before release, functioning less as a brake on development than as a mechanism to secure the social license required to continue scaling without the threat of restrictive, external government intervention. Meta, xAI, and NVIDIA openly opposed new government-led regulation at Dreamforce on September 15, highlighting that the proposed body is a strategic bloc rather than an industry-wide standard. Seven days after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a 3,800-word essay on September 12 calling for an industry-wide slowdown, Reuters reported that the company is considering a new model release to counter GPT-6 Astra. Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez has labeled the proposal a cartel by any other name, drawing direct parallels to the SEC's 1975 NRSRO designation and Europe's 1985 Motor Vehicle Block Exemption.