Jensen Huang breaks social media silence to defend open AI models alongside tech giants

Jensen Huang's first-ever post on X is in defense of open access to AI models, alongside Google, OpenAI, and Meta

Many companies argue a bad guy with an open AI is best fought by a good guy with an open AI. Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang joined X last month, and recently made his first-ever post. As you could probably guess, it's about AI. He argues, alongside companies like Google, OpenAI, and Meta, that the US should not aim to restrict open models 'prematurely', as they're important for the growth of AI (among other things). Taking a quick step back, Open models are ones that give access to weights or even code to see how it runs and to allow users to modify them. These can be run locally and are customisable. Closed models are those that tend to be run by specific companies, accessed via the cloud and APIs, and keep all their weights hidden. Open models out of China, like DeepSeek, became a problem for American AI firms at the start of last year. They exploded onto the scene, offering similar services to the likes of OpenAI, but totally free and available locally. Just last week, the Trump administration was reportedly looking to ban Chinese AI models due to cybersecurity concerns. The battle between closed and open models is also partially a digital proxy war between American and non-American AI. Open models give access to anyone, and the US is hoping for AI dominance. Sharing how it builds its world-leading models could pose a risk to American hegemony, even if AI makers posit that open models are a benefit to everyone. Microsoft's open letter claims that open weights strengthen competition and "expand access to the AI economy". Effectively, the wider adoption of AI is good for the companies betting on it, and the likes of AMD, Cloudflare, Google, GitHub, IBM, Hugging Face, LM Studio, Meta, OpenAI, and of course Nvidia have signed the appeal. The letter claims to want to avoid "premature restrictions on open models that stifle competition or drive innovation overseas". Huang says "AI will transform every industry, power every company, and be built by every country. Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty. The world needs both frontier closed models and frontier open models." The letter does acknowledge problems with open models, though. It says "open weights carry real and distinct risks. Once released, the weights are beyond the original developer's control, and modified versions are difficult to trace or reverse. But the right response to this risk is not to prohibit open weights." Not only is wider adoption good for these companies, but they argue the insights gained from open models can be used to counter the negative effects or risks of leaving them widely accessible to all. And, ultimately, it's in the interest of the companies causing the memory crisis to justify AI of all kinds. The increasing prices of hardware, use of water, and general strain on resources have got to be worth all the effort, right?

Andrew Ng Backs Jensen Huang's Open AI Push, Says 'Closed Models Are Safer' PR Is 'Regulatory Capture' -

Ng Supports Nvidia's Open AI Security Push On Monday, Ng voiced support for Huang in a post on X after the Nvidia CEO said defenders need access to both open and closed frontier AI models. He shared Huang's post on X and wrote, "Good move by @JensenHuang. The Nvidia letter is well written and worth reading. As we saw with the OpenAI-Hugging Face hack, we need open models and harnesses for defense." He added, "Let's stop believing the PR that closed models are safer. - that's just regulatory capture." Jensen Huang Cites Security Incident Huang argued that cyber defenders need access to frontier AI capabilities to counter increasingly sophisticated threats. "Attackers have frontier AI. Defenders need a frontier AI ecosystem -- the best open and closed models, force-multiplied by a global community," he wrote. Referring to the recent Hugging Face incident, Huang said, "During the Hugging Face incident, closed AI blocked essential forensics. An open-weight frontier model helped contain the intrusion." He added that the episode reinforced Nvidia's decision to launch the Open Secure AI Alliance. Google CEO Supports Open-Weight AI Models Pichai highlighted Google DeepMind's Gemma models as an example of the company's commitment to open AI development. OpenAI Breach Sparks AI Safety Debate Last week, Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue called for more transparency after an OpenAI AI agent breached Hugging Face infrastructure during a security test. He urged OpenAI to release activity logs and provide $100 million in compute resources to support AI cybersecurity research. OpenAI said the incident happened during controlled testing, with the model accessing systems while attempting a benchmark task rather than intentionally targeting Hugging Face. CEO Sam Altman said the company was sharing findings and working with Hugging Face. Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo courtesy: jamesonwu1972 / Shutterstock.com Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

Jensen Huang has strong words for Washington on AI

Some people build the loudest thing in the world and never say a word in public about it. That silence is a choice. It usually holds right up until the moment the rules being drafted in someone else's building start to matter more than the product being built in yours. Jensen Huang has run Nvidia (NVDA) since 1993. He gives interviews, fills arenas in a black leather jacket, and has spent three years as the most quoted executive in technology. He has also never once posted on social media. Washington, meanwhile, has spent recent weeks arguing over whether Americans should be allowed to download artificial intelligence (AI) models built in China. The argument sharpened on July 16, when a Beijing startup called Moonshot AI released a free model that independent testers ranked near the very top of the field. On July 24, Huang finally posted something. He used it to hand Washington a letter. NurPhoto / Getty Images Why open-weight AI models turned into a Washington fight Open-weight models are the part of AI most people never see. The weights are the billions of numbers that decide how a model answers you, and when a developer publishes them, anyone can download that model, inspect it, modify it, and run it on hardware they own. That is the opposite of how ChatGPT or Claude reach you. Those run inside a company's own systems, through a paid app or interface, according to Decrypt. More Artificial Intelligence: The distinction stopped being academic this year. Chinese labs kept publishing their weights for free while American leaders kept theirs locked up, and the free versions got good. Moonshot's Kimi K3 ranked third on one widely tracked capability index and first in a blind coding arena, according to Unite.AI. It also costs a fraction of what American frontier models charge. Washington noticed. The administration has weighed restricting the use of Chinese open models, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it is examining them for evidence of stolen American intellectual property, reported Quartz. The concern runs on two tracks. One is security, the worry that a downloaded Chinese model could function as a backdoor. The other is commercial, the fear that free Chinese models undercut American labs spending tens of billions to train their own. I have covered the demand side of this fight for months, and what keeps striking me is how one-sided the public argument had been. Policymakers heard from a small number of closed-model labs. The companies selling the chips, servers and cloud capacity underneath all of them stayed quiet. What Jensen Huang actually told Washington in his first post That changed July 24. Huang used his first post on X to share a three-page letter titled "Open Weights and American AI Leadership," signed by 25 companies and organizations. The letter opens in the 1980s, when open-source advocates argued that software would only improve if outsiders could read it. That movement now underpins most of the internet and systems used by the U.S. military and federal agencies, the signatories wrote in the letter. Its central claim is the one Washington will find hardest to wave off. "Openness may be one of the most important paths to AI safety," the letter argues. The signers asked policymakers to avoid premature restrictions that would drive innovation overseas, and to stop treating distillation, the practice of training one model on another model's outputs, as theft. "Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty," Huang wrote on X. The signatory list is the part I would put in front of a skeptical editor first. This is not a hobbyist coalition. It is Meta, Microsoft, IBM, Dell Technologies, Palantir, CrowdStrike, Andreessen Horowitz, Mozilla, the Linux Foundation and Y Combinator, among others. Here is how nine days reshaped the debate. * Moonshot AI released Kimi K3 on July 16, with full public weights due July 27, according to Tom's Hardware. * Huang told Axios on July 21 that the Chinese models are "excellent" and should be used, reported Fortune. * Bessent told Fox Business that same week that the administration is reviewing Chinese models for stolen U.S. technology, per Quartz. * Twenty-five companies published the open-weights letter on July 24, and neither OpenAI nor Anthropic signed it, reported CNBC. Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella backed the same argument the same day. "Open-weight models are essential to a healthy AI ecosystem," he wrote, reported PYMNTS. What the open model fight means for Nvidia investors Here is where all of this lands on your screen. Nvidia sells the hardware every model runs on, open or closed. A world with 12 credible model families consumes more compute than a world with three, because each one gets fine-tuned, re-run and deployed separately by thousands of companies that would otherwise rent capacity from a single provider. Huang has said the quiet part out loud. "Free AI should be great for chips," he told Axios, per Quartz. That is the commercial logic sitting under the principle, and my analysis is that both things are true at the same time. Huang appears to believe concentration is a genuine security risk, a theme he returned to when he told shareholders that national security comes before commercial opportunity, TheStreet reported. He also runs a company with a market value above $5 trillion, per Quartz, whose growth depends on AI reaching as many hands as possible. The absence on that letter is just as informative as the presence. OpenAI and Anthropic, each valued near $1 trillion and each having confidentially filed for an initial public offering, sat this one out, CNBC reported. Both sell access to models customers cannot download. For a retail investor, none of this is abstract policy talk. If Washington restricts Chinese open models, the labs with the most expensive products get a moat. If it does not, cost curves keep falling, adoption keeps widening, and the company selling the shovels keeps selling shovels into a bigger dig. Neither outcome is priced in with much confidence, which is why the letter reads less like advocacy and more like a hedge against a rule nobody has written yet. Two dates decide how much of this reaches a portfolio. Moonshot publishes the Kimi K3 weights on July 27. Nvidia reports earnings on Aug. 26. Huang waited more than 30 years to say anything at all on social media, then picked this fight, in this week. Watch what Washington does with it. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc. This story was originally published July 27, 2026 at 4:03 AM.