Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has publicly denied that his company supports banning open-weight AI models, following industry speculation prompted by an open letter from Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft, Hugging Face and Mistral urging policymakers against "premature restrictions" on such models. In a blog post published on Monday, Amodei clarified that Anthropic has never advocated for such a ban and that he views open-weight models without dangerous capabilities as a public good, distinct from the threat he believes authoritarian states pose.

Amodei's real concern lies with "authoritarian governments" — particularly the Chinese Communist Party, which he called the "most capable" such actor — potentially using advanced AI to secure military dominance or repress their populations, including through biological or cyberattacks. He argued open-weight models are harder to safeguard once released, citing a UK AI Security Institute report noting they cannot be withdrawn, and called for restricting China's access to powerful chips and cracking down on "distillation" techniques used to copy rival models. He also voiced support for a global AI safety-testing body, provided China participated too, suggesting cooperation on biological weapons risks could be achievable.