Top Tech Companies Defend Open-Source AI Models In a Letter to Lawmakers

IBL News | New York

Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Palantir, and more than 20 top tech companies released a letter Friday defending open-source AI models while urging policymakers to avoid “premature restrictions” that would “stifle competition or drive innovation overseas.”

The joint letter came as Chinese open-weight models are gaining steam against leading offerings from American companies, sparking a debate about whether they should be restricted.

These models are available for users to download, modify, and run on their own infrastructure, and they have been the subject of fierce debate within the tech sector in recent weeks.

OpenAI and Anthropic, which are gearing up for potentially massive IPOs, did not sign the letter.

Moonshot AI, a Chinese startup, amplified concerns earlier this month after releasing a model called Kimi K3 that outperforms cutting-edge American offerings across some industry benchmarks. However, the U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the Trump administration would look into whether Chinese companies were stealing American intellectual property, and stated that the government has “the ability to sanction them because of this theft.”

But in the letter on Friday, the group of U.S. tech companies cautioned against any rash actions. They wrote that open-weight models strengthen competition and ensure that the benefits of the technology are “broadly shared rather than concentrated in a few hands.”

“Relying solely on closed models is not inherently safe: they can be breached, misused, or fail in ways that outsiders cannot detect,” the letter said. “And concentrating 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 personal social media accounts.

Jensen 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 world needs both frontier closed models and frontier open models.”

Satya Nadella said, “Open-weight models are essential to a healthy AI ecosystem. Together with others across our industry, we are outlining a path for open-weight models to strengthen American competitiveness and expand economic opportunity, while protecting national security.”

Elon Musk, who runs an AI business under his rocket company SpaceX, also amplified the letter on social media, writing that it has his “full support” in a post on X.

In the letter on Friday, the U.S. tech companies said that concerns about unlawful distillation should be addressed through “targeted legal and commercial frameworks” instead of with “sweeping restrictions on techniques that play an important role in AI innovation.”

“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 letter said. “This is essential for creating opportunities for innovation and prosperity across the country.”

For my first post, I’m sharing a letter @NVIDIA signed on why open models matter.

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.… pic.twitter.com/t02bi51N4C

— Jensen Huang (@JensenHuang) July 24, 2026

 

Open-weight models are essential to a healthy AI ecosystem. Together with others across our industry, we are outlining a path for open-weight models to strengthen American competitiveness and expand economic opportunity, while protecting national security. https://t.co/Tr0sAzAxTD pic.twitter.com/opMwEbtpoq

— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) July 24, 2026