--- title: "David Sacks Warns Anthropic Doesn't Want Competition: 'You're Going to Basically Put a Dagger Through the Heart of the Entire American Open Source Ecosystem'" type: "News" locale: "en" url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/293845833.md" description: "David Sacks accused Anthropic of stifling AI competition, warning that restricting open-source models harms the U.S. ecosystem. He argued that labeling Chinese open-source models as tainted discourages American developers from building on public weights. Sacks distinguished between model weights and outputs, defending distillation practices. His comments align with a coalition including Nvidia and Meta urging policymakers to embrace open-weight AI to maintain U.S. leadership and innovation." datetime: "2026-07-26T08:46:08.000Z" locales: - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/293845833.md) - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/293845833.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/293845833.md) generator: "portal-rs" --- # David Sacks Warns Anthropic Doesn't Want Competition: 'You're Going to Basically Put a Dagger Through the Heart of the Entire American Open Source Ecosystem' **David Sacks**, Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, accused **Anthropic** of trying to stifle competition in the AI industry, warning that efforts to restrict open-source AI models could cripple the broader U.S. AI ecosystem. Speaking on a recent episode of the **All-In Podcast**, Sacks argued that labeling Chinese open-source AI models as tainted by intellectual property theft would discourage American developers from building on publicly available models. He said such a move would "basically put a dagger through the heart of the entire American open source ecosystem," adding that Anthropic "doesn’t want to have the competition." ## **Open Source AI Is ‘Not a Chinese Model Anymore,’ Says Sacks** Sacks said critics were overlooking how open-source AI development actually works. Once model weights are released publicly, he argued, developers around the world, including in the U.S., can legally download, modify and build on them using their own infrastructure, without sending data back to China. To illustrate his point, Sacks pointed to examples including **Mira Murati’s** startup **Thinking Machines** and AI coding startup **Cursor**, saying both leveraged the open-source Chinese model Kimi K2.5 as a foundation before further training it on their own data. **Read Also: Elon Musk Says Mars Could Shield Humanity From Deadly Pandemics, Rogue AI — And Maybe Even Lead Us to Aliens** Calling such models “tainted” because of unproven intellectual property allegations, he argued, would effectively prevent American companies from benefiting from open-source innovation and ultimately weaken the U.S. AI ecosystem. ## **Sacks Draws Line Between AI ‘Weights’ and ‘Outputs’** Sacks also argued that policymakers often conflate AI model weights, the underlying parameters that power a model, with the outputs those models generate. He said stealing proprietary model weights would amount to software theft, but maintained that using a model’s outputs to train another AI system, a process known as distillation, is fundamentally different. He further contended that OpenAI and Anthropic have themselves defended training AI models on publicly available content, pointing to OpenAI’s legal defense in The New York Times copyright lawsuit. According to Sacks, if AI companies argue they can learn from online content without copying it outright, then criticizing other companies for learning from AI-generated outputs presents an inconsistent standard. He added that companies concerned about distillation should focus on strengthening their own safeguards and enforcing their terms of service rather than seeking broader restrictions on open-source AI. ## **Jensen Huang Joins the Open-Source AI Push** Sacks’ comments come as a growing coalition of AI companies is urging Washington to embrace open-weight AI. Earlier this week, **Nvidia Corp.** (NASDAQ:NVDA) CEO **Jensen Huang** used his first-ever post on **X** to endorse a letter arguing that open-weight AI models are critical to maintaining U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence. Signed by more than 20 companies and organizations, including Nvidia, **Meta Platforms Inc.** (NASDAQ:META), **Microsoft Corp.** (NASDAQ:MSFT), **International Business Machines Corp.** (NYSE; IBM), **Palantir Technologies Inc.** (NASDAQ:PLTR), **Hugging Face**, **Mistral AI** and **Perplexity**, the letter argues that restricting open models would slow innovation, weaken cybersecurity and make advanced AI less accessible to startups, researchers and public institutions. It also defends AI distillation as a standard development practice, urging policymakers to address legitimate intellectual property concerns through targeted legal frameworks rather than broad restrictions on open-source AI. **Read Also: Gary Black Says Tesla's 14% Post-Earnings Selloff Shows Investors Took Management's 'Caution About Not Scaling' Autonomy to Heart** ***Disclaimer*****:** *This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.* *Photo courtesy: Shutterstock* ### Related Stocks - [ANTH.NA](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/ANTH.NA.md) - [NVDA.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDA.US.md) - [META.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/META.US.md) - [NVDY.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDY.US.md) - [METU.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/METU.US.md) - [NVDU.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDU.US.md) - [FBL.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/FBL.US.md) - [METW.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/METW.US.md) - [METD.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/METD.US.md) - [NVD.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVD.US.md) - [NVDL.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDL.US.md) - [NVDB.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDB.US.md) - [NVDD.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDD.US.md) - [NVDG.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDG.US.md) - [NVDO.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDO.US.md) - [NVDS.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDS.US.md) - [NVDW.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDW.US.md) - [NVYY.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVYY.US.md) - [NYYY.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NYYY.US.md) - [NVDX.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDX.US.md) - [NVDQ.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDQ.US.md) - [DIPS.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/DIPS.US.md) - [MAGX.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/MAGX.US.md) - [FBY.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/FBY.US.md) - [FBYY.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/FBYY.US.md) - [07388.HK](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/07388.HK.md) - [07788.HK](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/07788.HK.md) - [09388.HK](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/09388.HK.md) - [OpenAI.NA](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/OpenAI.NA.md) - [NYT.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NYT.US.md) - [MSFT.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/MSFT.US.md) - [IBM.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/IBM.US.md) - [PLTR.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/PLTR.US.md) - [TSLA.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/TSLA.US.md) - [SSTK.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/SSTK.US.md) - [NVD.DE](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVD.DE.md) ## Related News & Research - [BREAKINGVIEWS-Anthropic’s deceleration has some IPO upside](https://longbridge.com/en/news/296261346.md) - [VTIX: Orders up 150% post-Meta launch, gross margin hits 30%, and defense/enterprise momentum grows](https://longbridge.com/en/news/296508149.md) - [What Nvidia's $500 billion Wall Street deal signals about the AI boom](https://longbridge.com/en/news/296063112.md) - [Alibaba’s Qwen hits 3 billion downloads, outpacing China and US AI rivals](https://longbridge.com/en/news/296018089.md) - [IREN Just Passed Its Biggest AI Test as Microsoft and Nvidia Bet Billions](https://longbridge.com/en/news/296533962.md) --- > **Disclaimer: This article is for reference only and does not constitute any investment advice.**