ChatGPT users accused Microsoft of “ruthlessly” squeezing OpenAI’s computing supply through exclusive cloud agreements, artificially inflating AI subscription prices, and rushing its own competing products to market.
of lawsuitThe complaint, filed Monday in San Francisco federal court, alleges that Microsoft “secretly turned its investment into a noose” and used its Azure cloud advantage to limit the computational resources needed to run ChatGPT, keeping prices at levels that were “100 to 200 times” higher than competitors during the February 2025 AI price war.
Eleven ChatGPT Plus subscribers have filed a lawsuit alleging that Microsoft overpaid subscription fees and received downgraded services from November 2022 to February 2025 due to anticompetitive conduct.
The lawsuit calls the case a “sequel to U.S. v. Microsoft,” references the company’s antitrust battles in the 1990s, and characterizes it as a “repeat offender” who has “grafted the same xenophobic tactics into AI.”
A 2019 deal with Microsoft gave it exclusive rights to power OpenAI’s commercial model with Azure computing, effectively giving the company contractual control over “horizontal competitors’ supply chains” while building its own generative AI products, according to the filing.
Plaintiffs define an emerging antitrust market, the consumer-generated AI market, to include subscription products such as ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, Gemini Advanced, and DeepSeek Chat.
Microsoft owns a 49% stake in OpenAI’s commercial arm and takes 20% of the revenue from its paid products, effectively “earning twice the profits, once from compute sales and once from the AI products themselves that it constrains,” the complaint alleges.
According to the complaint, once OpenAI began buying compute from Google Cloud in June 2025 and Microsoft’s exclusivity ended, the price of ChatGPT tokens fell 80% within weeks.
“Powerful experiment”
The complaint calls this a “powerful natural experiment” that demonstrates Microsoft’s “anticompetitive restraints” and notes that before the transition, ChatGPT users faced “poor quality, unreleased innovation, and slow response times.”
Navodaya Singh Rajpurohit, a legal partner at Coinque Consulting, said: “As far as evidence goes, the strongest piece of evidence would be the exclusivity contract itself.” decryption. “If that documentation shows that Microsoft retained or used control over OpenAI’s computing, that is primary evidence. Even if it is not available, internal emails and capacity records can communicate the incident.”
“Trade restrictions strengthen control,” Rajpurohit said, adding that the case is strong if Microsoft actually exercises or clearly maintains that control, but weaker if it doesn’t.
The complaint also alleges that Microsoft “still retains the contractual power to restrict OpenAI’s compute purchases,” and that power “is being wielded by one of its major competitors as a sword of Damocles against OpenAI.”
The plaintiffs are seeking monetary damages and a permanent injunction barring Microsoft from making exclusive computing deals with OpenAI, as well as disclosure of internal communications about computing supply, pricing, and integration.
“Courts can do more than impose fines on companies,” Rajpurohit explained. “We can order changes to OpenAI’s arrangements, remove exclusive terms, and set guardrails to prevent future challenges.”
This class action lawsuit comes amid a shift in the relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI. Japan’s Softbank is Negotiating investment of up to $25 billion The OpenAI acquisition amounted to more than $13 billion in Microsoft stock. Meanwhile, Microsoft has agreed to end its exclusive cloud provider status under the Stargate project.
Microsoft and OpenAI did not immediately respond. of decryption Request for comments.
