Jensen Huang just made his first-ever post on X (Twitter). The Nvidia chief used it to defend open models and warn Washington against locking them down.
He means open-weight artificial intelligence (AI), not the similarly named company OpenAI. These are models that anyone can download and reuse for free.
Why Nvidia is Fighting for Open Models
Huang shared the letter on Friday. Microsoft, Meta, and Hugging Face are among its 25 signers.
The group calls open models key to American AI leadership. They compare them to open-source software, which now powers much of the internet.
The timing stands out. About a year ago, the government backed open models in its own AI Action Plan. It even called them a strategic asset for the country.
Officials are now weighing curbs on Kimi K3 and other Chinese models. Kimi K3 launched on July 16 from China’s Moonshot AI. With 2.8 trillion parameters, it ranks among the best anywhere, open or closed.
The worry is not new. In January 2025, a cheap model from China’s DeepSeek sent shockwaves through Nvidia. The chip giant lost nearly $600 billion in a day. That was a record at the time.
The Safety Case for Openness
The letter also makes a safety case. Open models let many teams check the code. They can spot flaws and fix them fast. Closed models sit with a few firms, which the group calls a weak point.
The letter draws one more line. It separates distillation from theft. Distillation trains one model using another’s output. The group calls that normal research, not stealing.
This fight is live. White House adviser Michael Kratsios says Moonshot copied a US model to build Kimi K3.
Two big names are missing. OpenAI and Anthropic did not sign. They have instead warned Washington that strong Chinese open models are risky.
So the field is split over how open AI should be. Chinese models, meanwhile, already outpace US rivals in daily use.
“Policymakers have an important opportunity to act… keeping the frontier plural by avoiding premature restrictions on open models that stifle competition or drive innovation overseas,” the signatories make that case in their letter.
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The next few weeks will show if Washington listens.
Bitrue