A coalition of 25 companies, including Nvidia, Microsoft, IBM and Meta, and startups such as Perplexity and Hugging Face, is pushing back against broad restrictions on open-weight artificial intelligence models as the White House weighs its "national security" response to Chinese AI systems.
The group of companies signed an open letter on Friday urging policymakers in the United States not to impose sweeping "premature restrictions" on open-weight models. The letter draws a parallel to fears once raised about open-source software in the 1980s.
The letter says the AI leadership will be judged not by one frontier AI model, but by the capability of building "a strong, open ecosystem that diffuses into every sector".
The signatories describe open-weight models, systems whose core components can be downloaded, inspected, modified and run on independent infrastructure, as an important foundation because they widen access to advanced AI and make it more adaptable.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wrote his first-ever post on X Friday, sharing the letter on why open models matter.
