Four consumers want a court to decide whether slowing your own product down can be an antitrust violation.
Their complaint, filed in federal court in San Francisco on September 18, targets Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google. The theory: by agreeing to limit how fast their frontier models improve, the four restrained output, and a restraint does not turn lawful just because the products are new.
Section 1 of the Sherman Act anchors the claim, banning contracts and conspiracies in restraint of trade. The plaintiffs plead a per se violation, with quick-look and rule-of-reason theories as alternatives.
Charles Buist and Nick Spetsas of Florida and Cheyenne Hunt and Christine Bullock of California filed the suit, each for themselves and a proposed nationwide class. The defendants are Anthropic PBC, OpenAI OpCo, SpaceXAI LLC and Google LLC.
What the complaint does not ask for matters too. Unilateral safety and testing calls are untouched, as is the companies’ advocacy in Washington. The argument is that guardrails should be set by the public through legislation and juries.
Among the pleaded facts is a July working group on an industry standards body, staffed by representatives of Anthropic, OpenAI and Google. That coordination, the filing says, came before a public exchange on September 12.
