Approximately 200 Silicon Valley startups, organized by the Little Tech Association, have publicly urged the Trump administration to halt efforts to block access to Chinese open-weight artificial intelligence models, arguing that cutting off Chinese AI will weaken U.S. competitiveness. The association sent a letter to President Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and OSTP Director Michael Kratsios, marking the first organized response from the startup community after reports that the White House is reviewing potential restrictions on Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 model. The letter argued that "banning downloads of Chinese models will not prevent their proliferation and will ultimately only weaken U.S. startups." Harry Godfrey, executive director, urged a "scalpel, not a sledgehammer" approach. Suhail Doshi, founder of Particle, warned that "hundreds of companies would shut down immediately" if access were banned. On the same day, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang voiced support for Chinese open-source AI models in an Axios interview, stating "The Chinese models are great, and great open-source models should be used," and dismissing the possibility of Chinese AI displacing U.S. firms as "zero."