On July 24, 2026, Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, and 47 other technology companies, venture-capital firms, and nonprofits signed an open letter titled “Open Weights and American AI Leadership,” urging Washington not to restrict open-weight AI models and arguing that open weights are central to U.S. AI leadership.<\/p>\n
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang first shared the letter in his first post on X, with 25 initial signatories. A few notable names were absent from that first wave, including OpenAI. Within a day, support widened and the number of signatories doubled as OpenAI, Google, AMD, Cisco, and others joined. Anthropic did not sign.<\/p>\n
The letter defines open-weight models as AI models that anyone can download, inspect, modify, and run on their own infrastructure. It makes several specific claims about why restricting these models would hurt American interests:<\/p>\n
The letter acknowledges that open weights carry real risks: released weights are beyond the original developer’s control, and modified versions are hard to trace. It argues, however, that prohibition is not the answer. In a world where attackers use advanced AI, defenders need models with comparable capabilities, and open models broaden defensive capability and let vulnerabilities be found and remediated across many teams.<\/p>\n
The letter goes further, stating that openness may be one of the most important paths to AI safety and security, because relying solely on closed models is not inherently safe and concentrating advanced capability behind a few closed models creates single points of failure.<\/p>\n
The signatories outline three concrete policy requests. First, expand access to compute for startups and researchers. Second, invest in shared training assets such as datasets, tools, and evaluation frameworks. Third, keep the frontier plural by avoiding premature restrictions that stifle competition or drive innovation overseas.<\/p>\n
The letter also warns policymakers not to conflate legitimate model-development techniques with misappropriation, stating that distillation, the practice of using one model’s outputs to train another, should not be confused with misappropriation.<\/p>\n
The letter arrives amid accusations that Chinese labs extracted intelligence from U.S. models, including Anthropic’s Fable. Washington’s response remains unclear. Anthropic is the lone U.S. frontier lab not on the list of signatories.<\/p>\n
The full letter is available as a PDF on Nvidia’s site at images.nvidia.com.<\/p>\n
It is an open letter signed by Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, and 47 other technology companies, venture-capital firms, and nonprofits, published on July 24, 2026, urging Washington not to restrict open-weight AI models.<\/p>\n
The letter launched with 25 signatories, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sharing it on X. Within a day, support doubled to include OpenAI, Google, AMD, Cisco, and others. Anthropic did not sign.<\/p>\n
They argue open-weight models expand access to the AI economy, strengthen competition, avoid vendor lock-in, and may be one of the most important paths to AI safety and security, while warning that restricting them would drive innovation overseas.<\/p>\n