Anthropic Hit With Class-Action Over Claude Usage Caps as SpaceX Hype Hovers 🚀

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence firm in which Elon Musk's SpaceX holds a stake, was hit with a class-action lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, court records show. The suit, brought on behalf of Karl Kahn of Washington, D.C., targets the company's premium subscription tiers for its Claude model and seeks class-action status for paying subscribers dating to April 2024.

The complaint focuses on Anthropic's Max 5x plan at $100 per month and its Max 20x plan at $200 per month, both advertised as offering five times and 20 times the usage of the standard Pro plan. According to the filing, "the actual usage provided by the Max 5x and Max 20x plans is far below the advertised amount of usage," and the limits imposed on subscribers are difficult to understand or predict.

Anthropic has previously outlined its own plans to pursue a public offering, and SpaceX, an Anthropic backer, has been the subject of ongoing IPO speculation. The legal action arrives against that backdrop, though the filing does not address either company's listing plans. The suit's class period covers any U.S. consumer who purchased the higher-tier Claude subscriptions since April 2024.

No damages figure or specific remedy was listed in the initial filing, which instead asks the court to certify the proposed class and award relief to be determined at later stages of the litigation. Anthropic has not issued a public response to the complaint as of press time, and the case remains in its early procedural phase. The docket number and full text of the lawsuit were made available through the Northern District of California's electronic filing system.