Anthropic PBC CEO Dario Amodei and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang have cautioned against a broad government crackdown on open-weight AI systems, citing a groundbreaking Chinese AI model that has challenged US dominance in the industry. Amodei sought to dispel claims that Anthropic supports a ban on open-weight models, which allow users to download and customize the technology. At the same time, he called for the US to adopt policy measures to slow China’s AI development and said that all models — both open and closed — should undergo mandatory safety testing before release.
Dozens of tech companies have joined forces to urge Washington to avoid curbing open-source models. Tech industry leaders said that open systems help make advanced AI more accessible, adaptable, and widely available. Amodei reiterated his long-held stance that open-weight models pose a greater risk of enabling cyber or biological attacks. To reduce those risks, he is advocating strong chip controls, policy action to crack down on alleged misuse of US models by Chinese competitors, and mandatory testing of both open and closed models.
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios raised concerns about a US ban on open-weight models when he said the US government has evidence that Moonshot improperly accessed US AI models to build its latest model, a process known as distillation. That same week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent raised the prospect of sanctions against Chinese companies found to be engaging in the practice, which involves using the outputs of a parent model as training data for a student model.
Anthropic and OpenAI have accused Chinese AI firms, such as DeepSeek and Alibaba, of distillation. The US government has agreed to exchange information to combat these so-called attacks, which breach the companies’ terms of service. China denies that its AI developers have engaged in unfair distillation practices.
While some AI developers in the US, like OpenAI, do offer open-weight models, much of their focus has been on closed or proprietary systems sold to customers. Chinese companies have previously flooded the market with more affordable open models that typically lag behind the most cutting-edge software from US rivals but nonetheless offer a compelling product for the price.
The Trump administration is getting ready to publish a proposed framework for assessing the safety of advanced AI systems. Silicon Valley firms have expressed concerns about the inconsistent approach of recent US actions to regulate new models, such as the quick, temporary export controls imposed on Anthropic, which caused the company to briefly disable its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 products. One proposal taking shape would create an independent regulator that would vet AI models with industry input.
