The White House is visited by tourists on July 17, 2025 in Washington, DC.
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Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Palantir and more than 20 other companies issued a letter Friday urging policymakers to avoid “premature restrictions” on open-source artificial intelligence models that “could distort competition or drive innovation overseas.”
Open-source AI models are available for users to download, modify and use in their own infrastructure, and have been the subject of heated debate within the technology sector in recent weeks.
Chinese open-weight models are gaining momentum against the best offerings from American companies such as OpenAI again Anthropicwhich primarily develop proprietary, closed models. Officials and executives have been weighing whether or not to limit access to Chinese models in the US
Moonshot AI, a Chinese startup, raised concerns earlier this month after it released a model called the Kimi K3 that outperformed its top-of-the-line American offerings in every industry benchmark. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Tuesday that the Trump administration will look into whether Chinese companies have been stealing US intellectual property, saying the government “has the power to punish itself for this crime.”
But in a letter on Friday, a group of US technology companies warned against any rash actions. They write that open-source models strengthen competition and ensure that the benefits of technology are “widely shared rather than concentrated in the hands of a few.”
“Relying only on closed models is inherently unsafe: they can be broken, misused, or fail in ways that outsiders cannot see,” the letter said. “And cramming advanced AI capabilities behind a small number of closed models compounds that risk.”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella both shared the letter on their social media accounts.
OpenAI and Anthropic did not sign the letter. Both companies, each valued at about $1 trillion, are gearing up for potentially massive IPOs that could come as soon as this year. Anthropic privately filed its prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June, and OpenAI followed a few days later.
Greg Brockman, president of OpenAI, said Thursday that the company believes in broad access, and has not participated in any discussions with the Trump administration about a possible ban on Chinese open-source models in the US.
“I think, that the use of AI and AI is the most important thing to democratize,” Brockman told reporters during a press conference in New York City. “And, for me, in a deep sense, I think that having more models, more use, that’s a good thing.”
White House adviser Michael Kratsios said on Wednesday that Moonshot AI has improved its Kimi K3 model by outsourcing Anthropic technology. Distillation is the term for an AI training method where a smaller, less efficient model is built using the output from an existing, stronger model.
Kratsios wrote in a post on X that legalization of AI plays an important role in the new open ecosystem, but he warned that “a large, hidden level of industrialization aimed at stealing US proprietary technology” is “unacceptable.”
In a letter on Friday, the US tech companies said concerns about illegal distillation should be addressed through a “targeted legal and trade framework” instead of “blocking strategic boundaries that play a key role in AI innovation.”
“Our AI leadership will not be judged by a single AI model, but by how the United States builds a strong, open ecosystem that spans all sectors,” the letter said. “This is critical to creating opportunities for innovation and prosperity across the country.”
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