Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google are being sued over alleged collusion as pressure mounts to slow the rapid development of AI. The complaint, filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, points to a recent proposal from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who called for “industry-wide coordination” to “pace the frontier.” “We must slow the space in which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” Amodei wrote in a Sept. 12 essay. The plaintiffs allege that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI founder Elon Musk and Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis made an illegal business agreement among competitors by agreeing to slow the development of their AI systems, violating federal antitrust law. Within hours of Amodei publishing his essay, Musk responded, saying “Dario is right,” while Altman also said he agreed with Amodei. Hassabis called the proposal “the right path forward,” according to the complaint. Nick Rowley, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit on behalf of four plaintiffs, said decisions about AI safeguards should be made through government action rather than private agreements among major technology companies. The plaintiffs include Florida attorneys Charles Buist and Nick Spetsas, Cheyenne Hunt and California resident Christine Bullock. Amodei’s proposal had already raised antitrust concerns among lawmakers in Washington. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) rejected the idea during a Senate hearing with FBI Director Kash