[Digital Today reporter Jinju Hong] Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong (브라이언 암스트롱) publicly threw his weight behind open-weight artificial intelligence models, blockchain media outlet U.Today reported on July 24 (local time).

Armstrong responded to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's first post on X, formerly Twitter, saying open-weight models can deliver stronger performance than closed frontier models for internal corporate work.

The discussion began with a public letter Huang posted in his first X upload. The letter, titled "Open Weights and American AI Leadership," listed major technology companies including Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft and IBM. It argued open-weight models are important for broadening access to AI, spurring competition and maintaining U.S. technological leadership.

Armstrong said, "Coinbase also supports strong American open-weight models." He made public that Coinbase is already moving more of its work to such a system. He saw open-weight models tuned with internal data as potentially more practical in corporate settings than general-purpose closed models.

Armstrong wrote, "Open-weight models may actually out-perform frontier models inside companies." He then cited Coinbase's internal compliance use case, explaining that a model that has sufficiently learned internal data can become a better expert for specific tasks. He said, "A fine-tuning model trained on 100,000 of our internal compliance use cases could itself become a better specialist model than any frontier model."

His remarks focus on the idea that the strength of open-weight AI goes beyond openness and that competitiveness can increase for specific tasks when paired with company-specific data. For companies like Coinbase, where regulatory response and internal review carry significant weight, efficiency from a purpose-built model may matter more than a general-purpose model.

Huang's letter reflected a similar concern. It compared the current AI ecosystem to the early spread of open-source software in the 1980s and argued that open models can become the foundation for innovation. It acknowledged the risk of misuse for open-weight models. Still, it argued openness could help strengthen AI safety because researchers and security experts can develop safeguards together.

Major figures in the technology and cryptocurrency industries also echoed Huang's message. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said, "Fully support. Jensen is right." OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he wants the United States to maintain leadership in both open-source and proprietary AI development. Block founder Jack Dorsey called the initiative "excellent."

Against that backdrop, the debate over open-weight AI appears to be shifting from technology philosophy to corporate adoption strategy. Coinbase disclosed plans to transition internal workloads, and Nvidia and major big tech companies presented a policy direction through the public letter. Future focus is on which workloads companies will actually move to open-weight models and how they will balance the two goals of safety and fostering competition.

Supportive of strong American open-weight models. We're taking action to move more of our work loads to these models at @coinbase. I think open weight models may actually out-perform frontier models inside companies, because you can fine tune them via reinforcement learning and… https://t.co/7fwIdd6ami