Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta urge US to spare open models
Over 20 tech firms including Nvidia, Microsoft and Meta signed a letter warning Washington that broad open-weight curbs would push AI innovation offshore.
The letter
A coalition of more than 20 US technology companies — led by Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta and Palantir — published an open letter on July 24 urging policymakers to avoid "premature restrictions" on open-weight AI models. The signatories argued that sweeping limits would stifle domestic competition and drive innovation overseas, and that open weights bolster US competitiveness, cybersecurity and sovereignty. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang used his debut X post to amplify the letter, and Microsoft's Satya Nadella endorsed the message the same day.
The policy backdrop
The letter lands as Washington weighs curbs targeting Chinese open-weight models. The signatories contend that concerns about unlawful model distillation should be handled through "targeted legal and commercial frameworks" rather than blanket bans on techniques central to modern AI development. The debate sharpened after Hugging Face disclosed it had leaned on Z.ai's open-weight GLM 5.2 to help contain a cyberattack that OpenAI described as unprecedented — a case both camps now cite for opposite conclusions.
A telling absence
Notably, neither OpenAI nor Anthropic signed. Both closed-model leaders are valued near $1 trillion and are reportedly preparing large IPOs, and their absence underscores a widening split between the open-weight bloc — where Meta, Nvidia and the chip ecosystem have commercial incentives to keep weights flowing — and frontier labs that ship proprietary models.
Why it matters
The fight over open-weight regulation is becoming the defining US AI-policy battle of 2026. How Washington draws the line between curbing Chinese models and preserving American open-source ecosystems will shape who can build on, fine-tune and distribute frontier-adjacent models — and whether the next wave of AI startups is founded inside or outside the United States.