Nvidia, Microsoft Lead 25 Groups Against Open-Weight AI Restrictions

A Unified Front for Open Weights

Twenty-five technology companies, organizations, and platforms published an open letter on July 24, 2026, urging the Trump administration not to impose sweeping restrictions on open-weight AI models. The coalition includes Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Palantir, Andreessen Horowitz, Dell, Hugging Face, Mistral, IBM, Mozilla, and The Linux Foundation.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shared the letter in his first-ever post on X, which drew more than 11 million views. "For my first post, I'm sharing a letter Nvidia signed on why open models matter," Huang wrote. "The world needs both frontier closed models and frontier open models."

Notably absent from the signatories: OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have confidentially filed for IPOs with valuations approaching $1 trillion, positioning their business models around closed, API-gated systems rather than open ecosystems.

The China Factor

The letter arrives as Washington debates whether to ban Chinese open-weight models over national security concerns. The Trump administration is investigating whether Chinese AI labs like Moonshot AI engaged in distillation attacks to extract intellectual property from American companies, particularly Anthropic.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed the administration can sanction Chinese companies for IP theft and is actively investigating distillation attacks. The probe follows Moonshot AI's July 16 release of Kimi K3, described as the world's most powerful open-weight model with 2.8 trillion parameters.

The coalition's letter draws a distinction between legitimate distillation techniques and unlawful extraction, calling for "targeted legal and commercial frameworks rather than sweeping restrictions on techniques that play an important role in AI innovation."

Safety Through Openness

Signatories argue that open-weight models strengthen competition, expand access to AI, and may represent one of the most important paths to AI safety and security. "Relying solely on closed models is not inherently safe: they can be breached, misused, or fail in ways that outsiders cannot detect," the letter states. "And concentrating advanced AI capabilities behind a small number of closed models compounds that risk."

The coalition frames the issue as a matter of American AI sovereignty: "Our AI leadership will be judged not by one frontier AI model, but by whether the United States builds a strong, open ecosystem that diffuses into every sector."

Elon Musk quote-tweeted Huang's post with his "full support," though SpaceX did not officially sign the letter.

Startup Pushback

The corporate letter follows a separate effort earlier in the week. On July 22, nearly 200 AI startups sent their own letter to the White House opposing a ban on open-weight models, reflecting broad industry concern that restrictions would consolidate power among a few closed-model providers.

The debate exposes competing visions for AI's future: infrastructure providers like Nvidia and cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure benefit from commoditized models that drive GPU and compute demand, while companies betting on closed proprietary systems see their valuations tied to maintaining exclusive access to frontier capabilities.

The administration's decision will shape whether the U.S. maintains AI leadership through an open ecosystem or controlled frontier models, with implications for competition with China, the viability of upcoming AI IPOs, and the economic distribution of AI benefits across the technology sector.