Silicon Valley leaders from Anthropic’s Dario Amodei to Nvidia’s Jensen Huang warned against a US crackdown on open-weight artificial intelligence systems, deepening a debate about how Washington should respond to a surprise breakthrough from Chinese startup Moonshot. In a blog post released Monday, Amodei sought to dispel claims that Anthropic supports a ban on open-weight models, stating “Anthropic has never advocated for a ban on open-weights models,” while calling for the US to adopt policy interventions to slow China’s AI development and for mandatory safety testing before release. As the Trump administration and Congress grapple with how to respond to a new open-weight model from Chinese startup Moonshot AI called Kimi K3 that rivals offerings from Anthropic and OpenAI, tech leaders are planting their policy flags. Dozens of tech companies, including Anthropic’s main competitor OpenAI, have banded together to urge Washington to shy away from curbs on open-source models. In a missive signed on Friday, tech industry leaders, including Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Huang and Microsoft Corp. CEO Satya Nadella, said open systems help “make advanced AI more accessible, adaptable and widely available.” Anthropic has not signed the letter, a move that has led some to say the company is lobbying to hamstring Chinese competitors. Amodei denied that allegation and defended Anthropic’s decision, reiterating that open-weight models pose greater risks of enabling cyber or biological attacks and