Microsoft, Nvidia Lead Push Against Open-Source AI Restrictions
Microsoft, Meta and Nvidia are among 25 tech organizations calling on U.S. policymakers to avoid placing “premature restrictions” on open-weight AI models or “sweeping restrictions” on distillation.
In an open letter dated Friday (July 24), the organizations pointed to the benefits of the open-source software movement that began in the 1980s and said that open-weight models make advanced artificial intelligence more accessible, adaptable and widely available.
The letter said open weights enable organizations to build on advanced AI models without having to train one from scratch, let them match the right model to the right job, allow competition that spurs innovation and drives down costs, enable customers to avoid being locked into a single provider, give defenders the tools they need to respond to cybersecurity attackers, and let a broad community improve the models.
“A strong AI ecosystem is not a foregone conclusion,” the letter said. “Policymakers have an important opportunity to act. This includes expanding access to compute for startups and researchers, investing in shared training assets (datasets, tools, evaluation frameworks), and keeping the frontier plural by avoiding premature restrictions on open models that stifle competition or drive innovation overseas. These measures must also look at how strong application layers can expand sovereign use of AI across the economy.”
The letter also addressed distillation, saying this is a widely used technique that reflects the open-source software movement’s tradition of learning from and building upon existing technologies. The letter added that the legitimate concerns raised by unlawful efforts to extract value from closed models should be addressed through targeted legal and commercial frameworks rather than “sweeping restrictions.”
“In shaping this ecosystem, policymakers should be careful not to conflate legitimate model-development techniques with misappropriation,” the letter said.
Together with Microsoft, Meta and Nvidia, the signers of the open letter include American Innovators Network, Andreessen Horowitz, Arcee AI, Arena, Black Forest Labs, Box, CrowdStrike, Dell Technologies, Emergence Capital, Hugging Face, IBM, The Linux Foundation, Mariana Minerals, Mistral, Mozilla, Palantir, Perplexity, Reflection, Replit, ServiceNow, Telnyx and Y Combinator.
Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella shared the letter in a post on X and said: “Open-weight models are essential to a healthy AI ecosystem. Together with others across our industry, we are outlining a path for open-weight models to strengthen American competitiveness and expand economic opportunity, while protecting national security.”
Nvidia Founder and CEO Jensen Huang shared the letter in what he said was his first post on X, saying: “Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty. The world needs both frontier closed models and frontier open models.”
While OpenAI did not sign the letter, CEO Sam Altman shared Huang’s post in his own post on X and said: “I want the US to win in AI both in open source and proprietary models, and I am glad to see this.”
It was reported July 10 that the Trump administration’s recent restrictions on access to the most advanced U.S. AI models are accelerating enterprise interest in open-source models.
On Tuesday (July 21), it was reported that the White House will examine whether Chinese AI models have been distilled from their U.S. counterparts.
