U.S. tech companies urge policymakers to avoid curbs on open-weight AI models

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US tech urge open AI access

Highlights

Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Palantir and over 20 firms urge policymakers not to impose early restrictions on open-weight AI models, emphasizing competition and broad economic benefits.
Chinese startup Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 model surpasses leading American benchmarks, intensifying U.S. policy debate amid concerns over intellectual property theft and global AI competitiveness.
The industry letter argues that risks of unlawful model distillation should be addressed with targeted legal and commercial measures, rejecting broad limitations that could hinder U.S. AI innovation.

Industry letter targets policy response

As reported by CNBC, Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Palantir and more than 20 other companies release a letter on Friday urging policymakers to avoid what they call premature restrictions on open-weight artificial intelligence models. The group argues that models users can download, modify and run on their own infrastructure support competition and help spread the benefits of AI more broadly across the economy.

The companies say relying only on closed models does not automatically improve safety, warning that such systems can still be breached, misused or fail in ways outsiders cannot detect. They also argue that concentrating advanced AI capabilities in a small number of proprietary models increases risk rather than reducing it.

Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang and Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella both share the letter on their personal social media accounts. OpenAI and Anthropic, two companies focused mainly on proprietary models, do not sign the letter as both prepare for potentially large IPOs after confidential filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June.

Chinese competition raises pressure on U.S. strategy

Pressure on the policy debate increases as Chinese open-weight models continue to gain ground in the market. Moonshot AI, a Chinese startup, draws fresh attention earlier this month after releasing Kimi K3, a model that outperforms cutting-edge American offerings on some industry benchmarks.

U.S. officials are also weighing whether Chinese developers are benefiting from stolen American intellectual property. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tells CNBC on Tuesday that the Trump administration will examine whether Chinese companies are stealing U.S. intellectual property and says the government has the ability to sanction them if theft is confirmed.

OpenAI President Greg Brockman says on Thursday that the company supports broad access to AI and that he has not taken part in any discussions with the Trump administration about banning Chinese open-weight models in the U.S. White House adviser Michael Kratsios says on Wednesday that Moonshot AI developed Kimi K3 by distilling Anthropic's technology, while adding that lawful distillation remains important to open innovation and that covert industrial-scale theft of proprietary U.S. technology is unacceptable.

In their letter, the companies say any concerns over unlawful distillation should be handled through targeted legal and commercial frameworks rather than sweeping limits on methods they see as central to AI innovation. They frame the issue as part of a broader contest over whether the U.S. builds an open AI ecosystem that reaches every sector of the economy.

Our earlier coverage of the House Education and the Workforce Committee’s Augusta field hearing showed lawmakers putting workforce policy at the center of the U.S. AI debate, highlighting AI’s role in job creation, productivity, and growth across sectors from cybersecurity to health care. Participants argued for flexible, sector-specific approaches rather than one-size-fits-all regulation, while warning that heavy-handed rules could weaken U.S. innovation and competitiveness as global competition intensifies.

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