OpenAI and Google join expanded open-weights letter
OpenAI and Google have joined the expanding open-weights appeal to Washington, making Anthropic the most visible major frontier-lab holdout.
A reversal on open weights
OpenAI has signed the "Open Weights and American AI Leadership" letter, and the updated version of the document now includes Google as well. The move matters because when the letter first appeared on July 24, the most visible names were Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, IBM, Dell, Palantir, Hugging Face, Mistral and Perplexity, while OpenAI and Google were still outside the roster.
The original coalition of roughly 25 companies and institutions, which also included a16z, Y Combinator, the Linux Foundation and Mozilla, urged the U.S. government to avoid "premature restrictions" on downloadable AI models. The appeal landed days after reports that the Trump administration was reviving a push to restrict Chinese open-weight models, a policy fight in which the letter's signatories argue that curbing open models would concentrate the technology in a few hands rather than broadening its benefits.
Why the timing matters
OpenAI's earlier silence had been widely read as self-interest: a company built on closed frontier models has less to lose if downloadable weights face regulatory headwinds. Google joining the updated roster makes the shift broader than one company. The political center of gravity in Washington has moved enough that even major closed-model labs now want to be on record defending an open-weight ecosystem, at least at the policy level.
Why it matters
The letter is the clearest public marker yet of how U.S. industry is closing ranks against a potential ban on Chinese open models such as DeepSeek, Qwen and Kimi. For Asian labs whose global influence rests heavily on open releases, the shape of U.S. import and restriction policy is existential. OpenAI and Google joining removes two conspicuous holdouts and strengthens the argument that openness, not restriction, underpins American competitiveness. Anthropic remains the major missing name, which is why its separate statement against a blanket ban still drew so much attention.