America's top tech players have jointly come out in support of open-weight AI, stating that the advancement in the technology and the leadership of the US can only be ensured if the models remain available to be downloaded and modified by anyone.Open-weight models allow others to download, modify, inspect and run them on their own infrastructure.In an open letter, top US tech giants like Nvidia, Microsoft, Dell, Palantir, among others, advocated for open-weight AI models, citing the example of early software development that resisted the calls to keep them under tight control.Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang shared the letter in his maiden post on X."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," Huang wrote.The letter said that the American leadership of AI technology will not be judged by one frontier model but by the mere fact of whether the US builds a strong, open ecosystem that diffuses into every sector.The top tech giants, some of whom rival each other in the AI stack, jointly recognised the threat that sweeping regulations could pose to genuine AI development. On concerns over distillation, the letter says that unlawful efforts to extract value from closed models raise legitimate concerns and should be dealt with through a targeted legal and commercial framework.The letter also recognised the importance of open-weights AI in furthering the technology and its impact on the economy."Open weights expand access to the AI economy. Startups, established businesses, universities, and public institutions can build on advanced models without training one from scratch or paying frontiermodel prices for every task. Open weights let every organization match the right model to the right job at the right cost, reserving frontier-scale capability for genuine frontier problems and running efficient, specialized models everywhere else," the letter stated.The debate over open-source/open-weight AI models gathered traction after China's Moonshot AI released Kimi K3 open weight model that it claimed could rival some of the most advanced models by US players.Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent came out in support of open-source AI but with a caveat."We support open-source AI and the innovation it unlocks. But open source is not open season on American IP. When PRC firms conduct covert, industrial-scale distillation attacks that cross the line into IP theft, sanctions and Entity List designations will be on the table," Bessent wrote on X.The former advisor to US President Donald Trump also backed US AI players, saying that the light-touch regulation by the Trump administration will ensure that the AI leadership stays with the US."We should remain confident in American innovation. As long as we don't sabotage ourselves with unnecessary rules, the U.S. will continue to win," Sacks wrote on X.