More than 20 U.S. tech companies including Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta and Palantir urged policymakers to refrain from rushing regulation of open-weight artificial intelligence models.

CNBC reported on July 24 that the companies said in a joint letter that early regulation could curb competition and push innovation overseas.

An open-weight model is an AI model that users can download, modify and run on their own infrastructure. Debate has continued in the U.S. tech industry over whether to restrict access in the United States to Chinese open-weight models.

The backdrop is the rise of Chinese open-weight models. Chinese startup Moonshot AI earlier this month unveiled "Kimi K3", which it said outperformed cutting-edge U.S. models on some industry benchmarks. In addition, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on July 22 he would investigate whether Chinese companies stole U.S. intellectual property, and said the government could impose sanctions on such theft.

Companies that joined the letter argued that open-weight models strengthen competition and prevent technological benefits from being concentrated among a few. They said reliance only on closed models is not inherently safer, and added that such models can also be breached or misused and can fail in ways that are difficult for outsiders to detect.

They acknowledged concerns about illegal distillation but drew a line between the concern and the response. They argued that illegal distillation should be addressed through targeted legal and commercial frameworks, rather than broadly restricting technologies that play an important role in AI innovation.