SynopsisA broad coalition of companies and institutions, including Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft, Hugging Face, and the Linux Foundation signed a letter, arguing that open-weight models, which are systems anyone can download, inspect, and modify, deserve a major place in the US' AI strategy, not a defensive afterthought.APNvidia CEO Jensen Huang. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang used his first post on X to back a new coalition letter on open AI models, writing that "open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty."The letter was published this week by a broad coalition of companies and institutions, including Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft, Hugging Face, and the Linux Foundation. It argues that open-weight models, which are systems anyone can download, inspect, and modify, deserve a major place in the US' AI strategy, not a defensive afterthought.What the coalition saysIn the letter, the signatories draw a comparison to the early days of open-source software, which once seemed risky to an industry used to guarding its code but went on to become the backbone of the modern internet and much of the US government's own infrastructure. They argue AI is at a similar turning point.The companies made an economic case. "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. That discipline is what will make AI economically sustainable as its use scales into the billions of everyday tasks. America wins the AI era by diffusing it into the workflows of factories, hospitals, farms, classrooms, and main street businesses," the letter read.The letter also draws a line on training practices: distillation, or using one model's outputs to help train another, is described as a normal and useful technique, distinct from unlawful extraction of proprietary models, which it says should be handled through targeted legal tools rather than sweeping restrictions.This comes days after Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, accused China's Moonshot AI of covertly copying Anthropic's most advanced model to build its Kimi K3. In a post on X, he said the United States had "information that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic's Fable for the development of its K3 model."On security, the letter pushes back on the assumption that closed models are inherently safer. It argues that wider access lets more people stress-test systems and catch vulnerabilities. This in turn lets more people build defenses. ...moreElevate your knowledge and leadership skills at a cost cheaper than your daily tea.Subscribe Now