A philosophical divide among Silicon Valley technologists over AI development has escalated, with leading AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI arguing that AI models are too dangerous to be developed openly and must be tightly controlled by businesses for safety. In contrast, companies including Microsoft and Nvidia contend that open-source AI models must remain open for further development and new businesses. On Friday, Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s CEO, posted that “the world needs both frontier closed models and frontier open models,” while Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella posted that open-source software was “essential to a healthy AI ecosystem.” Both signed a letter supporting open source, also signed by executives at Meta, Palantir and IBM. Simultaneously, OpenAI and Anthropic have lobbied regulators in Washington to restrict open-source AI models. The fight stems from China’s rapid progress in open-source AI models; two Chinese AI startups, Z.ai and Moonshot AI, have recently released models that rival those from American labs. Anthropic and OpenAI claimed Chinese companies improperly harvested data from their systems. Microsoft and Nvidia said open-source software advances technology with shared knowledge and allows security examination. Critics argue constraining open-source software could cement OpenAI and Anthropic’s lead, stifling competition.