Nvidia, Microsoft urge US to avoid broad restrictions on open AI models

Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta and more than 20 other technology companies are urging U.S. policymakers not to broadly restrict open-weight artificial intelligence (AI) models, saying the technology is critical to maintaining America's leadership in the global AI race.

In a joint letter released Friday, the companies argued that open AI models accelerate innovation, strengthen cybersecurity and help ensure the U.S. remains competitive as countries race to develop increasingly powerful AI systems.

"Our AI leadership will be judged not by one frontier AI model, but by whether the United States builds a strong, open ecosystem that diffuses into every sector," the signatories wrote.

The industry's public appeal comes as the Trump administration weighs its approach to open-AI models after senior officials raised concerns about Chinese AI developer Moonshot AI and its open-weight Kimi K3 model.

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On Wednesday, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios accused Moonshot of developing Kimi K3 by distilling Anthropic's Fable 5 model. Distillation, a technique that trains a smaller AI model using the outputs of a more advanced one, has become a flashpoint in the race to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also suggested this week that the United States could sanction companies found to have improperly used distillation to appropriate intellectual property.

While defending open AI development, the coalition acknowledged that companies found to have illegally extracted value from proprietary models should face consequences.

"Unlawful efforts to extract value from closed models raise legitimate concerns," the letter states. "Those concerns should be addressed through targeted legal and commercial frameworks rather than sweeping restrictions on techniques that play an important role in AI innovation."

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Open-weight AI models allow developers to download and customize a model's underlying parameters, making them more accessible than proprietary systems maintained by companies that keep their models closed.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang amplified the effort Friday in his first-ever post on X.

"For my first post, I'm sharing a letter @NVIDIA signed on why open models matter," Huang wrote.

"AI will transform every industry, power every company, and be built by every country."

"Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty."

The letter was signed by Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Dell Technologies, IBM, Palantir, Hugging Face, Mozilla, Mistral, Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator and other technology companies, startups and organizations.

Notably absent were OpenAI and Anthropic, two of the leading developers of proprietary frontier AI models. Google and Elon Musk's xAI also did not sign the statement.

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The industry's coordinated push highlights a growing divide over how policymakers should balance national security and intellectual property concerns with efforts to keep the U.S. competitive in artificial intelligence as China ramps up investment in advanced AI systems.

Nvidia, Anthropic and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy did not immediately respond to FOX Business' requests for comment.