Jensen Huang and 25 Tech Giants Urge US to Avoid Restrictions on Open AI Models

Jensen Huang used his first X post to promote an open-weights policy letter signed by 25 companies, including Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, IBM, Dell, Palantir, Hugging Face, and venture firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator. The letter asks Washington to avoid "premature restrictions" on downloadable AI models, emphasizing that open models strengthen safety, accelerate innovation, and enable digital sovereignty. Missing signatories include OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Huang noted at CES 2026 that one in four AI tokens now come from open models, running on enterprise clusters and regional clouds rather than hyperscaler APIs.

The letter's policy section calls for expanded compute access for startups and researchers, plus public investment in shared datasets and evaluation frameworks. On distillation—training one model on another's outputs—the letter urges policymakers to avoid broad restrictions, recommending targeted legal frameworks instead. This comes as the Trump administration considers sanctioning Chinese open-source models over alleged IP theft. Huang told Axios that American firms should be allowed to use Chinese models, calling backdoor claims a misconception. The signatories include model developers (Meta, Mistral, Black Forest Labs, Arcee AI, Reflection) that already publish open weights.