- Several AI companies in the United States published an open letter
- Letter campaigns for open-weight, unrestricted AI
- Meanwhile, the US government accuses Moonshot AI of intellectual property theft
Any hopes AI tech journalists may have had of relaxing quietly over the weekend were dashed by some of the biggest names in the industry sharing an open letter in support of open-weight AI models – while the White House accused China of “large-scale” theft from US companies in building its open-weight AI.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang got the ball rolling with his first-ever tweet, linking to a statement championing open-weight AI models, those models that can be downloaded, viewed, and modified by anyone. Models like this are essential to making AI “more accessible, adaptable, and widely available,” the open letter says.
It is co-signed by a large number of well-known technology and AI companies, including Meta, Microsoft, Perplexity and IBM. Although ChatGPT developer OpenAI – which has until now focused more on a closed model – did not appear in Huang’s original post, he has now also backed up these sentiments.
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Essentially, these companies are campaigning for the openness of AI to drive innovation and access, while opposing “premature restrictions” imposed by governments. It is no coincidence that the US government led by President Trump has recently attempted to take a greater role in evaluating AI models and deciding when they should be released.
It’s also worth noting that Anthropic and Google are not listed as backers of this open letter. We don’t have any official comments from these companies yet, so it’s hard to judge the reasoning – Google regularly releases open AI models, after all – but it might have something to do with the recent accusations aimed at Moonshot AI in China.
Open and closed
For my first article, I’m sharing a letter signed by @NVIDIA explaining why open models are important. AI will transform every industry, power every business, and be built by every country. Open models strengthen security and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty.… pic.twitter.com/t02bi51N4CJuly 24, 2026
Part of the context for this open letter is that Chinese company Moonshot AI is accused of distilling Claude’s (closed) Fable 5 model in order to build its own (open) Kimi K3. Simply put, distillation works by asking an AI model millions of questions and using the answers as training data.
This is something Moonshot AI has denied, while touting the potential of the open-weighted, free-to-download Kimi K3 AI model, which will be released on Monday – another factor in this open letter appearing now. The American government speaks of intellectual property theft and has responded forcefully.
“We support open source AI and the innovation it enables,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on
What Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft and the other co-signers of the open letter appear to be doing is trying to pre-empt any possible US government crackdown on open-weighted models. Although everyone agrees that these AI models are beneficial, the next regulatory steps are unclear.
However, the open letter is vague and general enough that you can read between the lines in different ways. This may or may not be intended to allude to the Moonshot AI case. What is clear is that we are reaching a tipping point in AI regulation and innovation across the world, and everyone has their own point of view.
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