Silicon Valley is divided over whether the US should restrict Chinese-made open-weight AI models, which are spreading rapidly and can rival leading American systems. The dispute matters because it pits national-security and intellectual-property concerns against startups’ reliance on affordable, adaptable AI tools, while potentially strengthening the market power of major US labs.

Anthropic has accused Alibaba of extracting knowledge from its models through “distillation”, and the White House has similarly alleged that Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 was developed using Anthropic outputs. More than 200 startups, including Y Combinator, have urged the Trump administration not to impose an outright ban, arguing that restrictions would disadvantage smaller firms and create a monopoly for companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Investors including Bill Gurley, Chamath Palihapitiya and Jason Calacanis have publicly supported continued access, citing competition, research and lower costs.