OpenAI and Anthropic unite against open-weight AI risks to their bottom line(axios.com)
axios.com
OpenAI and Anthropic unite against open-weight AI risks to their bottom line
https://www.axios.com/2026/07/22/openai-anthropic-open-models-trump-china
331 comments
There is nothing these big tech companies hate more than competition. It took Google, Apple and M$ long long time to establish their monopolies. OpenAI and Anthropic are trying to speed run it.
No way this can go wrong for the U.S. economy! Do everything you can to protect the existing incumbents, pay no mind to the wider consequences.
Winning strategy.
Winning strategy.
You know what? That is fine based merely on recent openai/hugginface incident ( after all, they needed open weights model to actually troubleshoot it, because 'safe' one did not let em ).
Let it all burn:D
edit:
And lets hope we learn a lesson.
Let it all burn:D
edit:
And lets hope we learn a lesson.
“This is a point that bears repeating: because U.S. open weight model makers must follow the frontier labs’ terms of service, they (1) are worse than Chinese alternatives and (2) end up distilling the distillation, just with a detour through Chinese labs. Wouldn’t it be better if western open weight model makers could go to the source?
…
The U.S. should pass a law that (1) makes explicit that collecting data for training models is fair use, and (2) bars terms of service that forbid distillation, for U.S. companies at a minimum. Stopping distillation — which is literally just querying the API — is nearly impossible; the U.S. should go the other way and lean into a new copyright policy that both indemnifies the labs and also guarantees that what they learned fuels further innovation for everyone else” [1].
[1] https://stratechery.com/2026/whos-afraid-of-chinese-models/
…
The U.S. should pass a law that (1) makes explicit that collecting data for training models is fair use, and (2) bars terms of service that forbid distillation, for U.S. companies at a minimum. Stopping distillation — which is literally just querying the API — is nearly impossible; the U.S. should go the other way and lean into a new copyright policy that both indemnifies the labs and also guarantees that what they learned fuels further innovation for everyone else” [1].
[1] https://stratechery.com/2026/whos-afraid-of-chinese-models/
This feels like the US is going to take a page from Europes book and regulate itself into uncompetitiveness
To their mutual detriment. If anything, this proves how unsustainable of a business LLMs are in their current form.
This is a ultra speed run of what Red Hat and SuSE upending Windows in the 90s/00s.
LLMs are incredible and extremely useful, but they never should have been a for-profit venture. At least not at first. They should have originated from universities (who would have had the capital to fund model development and do so ethically in this universe), and LLMs should have been much, much smaller in scope (like autocorrect in word processors or autocomplete in IDEs). Instead, we (well, OpenAI mostly) opted to burn the Amazon to extract profit from the wood, our planet's future be damned.
Between this, transferring billions from EV R&D, eliminating the EV tax credit and targetting research universities, I can't help but think that Krebs was right. So MANY of the policy decisions being made by the US are inexplicable UNLESS you assume that a rootkit has infected the government.
This is a ultra speed run of what Red Hat and SuSE upending Windows in the 90s/00s.
LLMs are incredible and extremely useful, but they never should have been a for-profit venture. At least not at first. They should have originated from universities (who would have had the capital to fund model development and do so ethically in this universe), and LLMs should have been much, much smaller in scope (like autocorrect in word processors or autocomplete in IDEs). Instead, we (well, OpenAI mostly) opted to burn the Amazon to extract profit from the wood, our planet's future be damned.
Between this, transferring billions from EV R&D, eliminating the EV tax credit and targetting research universities, I can't help but think that Krebs was right. So MANY of the policy decisions being made by the US are inexplicable UNLESS you assume that a rootkit has infected the government.
It is ridiculous that OpenAI is a non-profit and Anthropic is a PBC, yet both actively resist open access to AI. This hinders human progress rather than serving it.
Open-weight is the destiny of our industry, it is the only endgame that doesnt lead to further totalitarian dystopia.
A world in which Americans are forced to put up with a duopoly of AI firms who gleefully steal everything they can get their hands on is not the fertile ground of future innovation.
The fate of Open-Weight models in America is a turning point for the entire country's tech industry. Do we let the lifeblood of innovation flow freely and without restriction, forcing these large companies and their investors to compete on an even playing field with the rest of the market? Or do we let the industry calcify as the threat of dumb rich people losing their money is too great a sacrifice to make for our future?
The fate of Open-Weight models in America is a turning point for the entire country's tech industry. Do we let the lifeblood of innovation flow freely and without restriction, forcing these large companies and their investors to compete on an even playing field with the rest of the market? Or do we let the industry calcify as the threat of dumb rich people losing their money is too great a sacrifice to make for our future?
"Why it matters: ...
The big picture: ...
Zoom in:...
Zoom out:..."
I wonder if they used an American or Chinese LLM to write this article?
The big picture: ...
Zoom in:...
Zoom out:..."
I wonder if they used an American or Chinese LLM to write this article?
It's inevitable. The value proposition of the software isn't large enough to justify (by itself) the valuation. Not to mention it's trained on lots of public or scraped data.
It's a gold rush, and the only guy getting rich will be the one selling the shovel (nvidia + cloud in this case).
It's a gold rush, and the only guy getting rich will be the one selling the shovel (nvidia + cloud in this case).
How ironic that OpenAI is fighting Open AI.
The comments on this article are terrible. I can't believe it's gotten this toxic around here.
Bill Gureley's talk on regulation comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9cO3-MLHOM&t=1447s
The reason barking at open source will only get the dog thrown into the river is because there is a whole lot more cumulative power distributed among companies and consumers who don't want two incumbents to dictate which kinds of alternatives can exist.
Note that those rushing to the "all corpos evil" talking points will turn around and advocate delegating these decisions to "the government." This is the same government that they also claim is bought by the corporations. It's also the same government that will enforce the regulatory capture on behalf of the yucky corporation against the broad, diverse interests.
Thinking big vs small while embracing the biggest of the big is some kind of inconsistency that people need to deal with by looking in the mirror and finding some awareness. Nuance. If your problem model is wrong, so is every solution you propose except if your wrong model may get lucky from time to time. Not every broken model is a broken clock. Some broken models cannot admit the right answer ever.
The real dynamic on display here is broad, correlated mass of overlapping interests, big and small. The big pile of people and entities that don't want to be governed by OpenAI and Anthropic can push harder and win the tug of war. You don't have to like your temporary allies all the time, but at least know who they are and when you are aligned.
The reason barking at open source will only get the dog thrown into the river is because there is a whole lot more cumulative power distributed among companies and consumers who don't want two incumbents to dictate which kinds of alternatives can exist.
Note that those rushing to the "all corpos evil" talking points will turn around and advocate delegating these decisions to "the government." This is the same government that they also claim is bought by the corporations. It's also the same government that will enforce the regulatory capture on behalf of the yucky corporation against the broad, diverse interests.
Thinking big vs small while embracing the biggest of the big is some kind of inconsistency that people need to deal with by looking in the mirror and finding some awareness. Nuance. If your problem model is wrong, so is every solution you propose except if your wrong model may get lucky from time to time. Not every broken model is a broken clock. Some broken models cannot admit the right answer ever.
The real dynamic on display here is broad, correlated mass of overlapping interests, big and small. The big pile of people and entities that don't want to be governed by OpenAI and Anthropic can push harder and win the tug of war. You don't have to like your temporary allies all the time, but at least know who they are and when you are aligned.
I don't think it's ever a good idea to change the rules of the game in order to stay competitive.
In recent years, with US further turning their back from globalization into America first protectionism, the rest of the world is getting increasingly tired and slowly de risking out of US products and tech.
European companies are either suffering us levies, or us interference with whom they can conduct business with, or consistently risking that their service and cloud providers can become liabilities over night.
EU is also strongly pushing for US alternatives in payments, telecoms, space, etc. And I didn't even mention politics yet.
US is still enjoying an apex position, but it may overestimate its gripe and underestimate resentments (Greenland threats have been a point of no return).
The actions of US looks like those of a decaying empire.
What plays in US hands is that its biggest "allies" are mature democracies, and mature democracies really procrastinate any painful change unless they have to confront it, thus it may keep getting away with this for very long.
In recent years, with US further turning their back from globalization into America first protectionism, the rest of the world is getting increasingly tired and slowly de risking out of US products and tech.
European companies are either suffering us levies, or us interference with whom they can conduct business with, or consistently risking that their service and cloud providers can become liabilities over night.
EU is also strongly pushing for US alternatives in payments, telecoms, space, etc. And I didn't even mention politics yet.
US is still enjoying an apex position, but it may overestimate its gripe and underestimate resentments (Greenland threats have been a point of no return).
The actions of US looks like those of a decaying empire.
What plays in US hands is that its biggest "allies" are mature democracies, and mature democracies really procrastinate any painful change unless they have to confront it, thus it may keep getting away with this for very long.
National pride aside, we must decide if competition is good or is it bad. In the west we've been conditioned that competition is good and expect consequences and tradeoffs. In this case we're seeing incumbents trying to lobby government to secure their market share.
People rightfully question if these business models were ever feasible or sustainable to begin with. But isn't that the risk they took? We can certainly recognize that being displaced before realizing profit from your work is like a kick in the pants, but isn't that always supposed to be a possible outcome? I realize that is part of why we have intellectual property rights to reward innovators - but that isn't a universal concept in this global economy.
Which, some might argue, may be the point on the global stage. It is an ideological competition as well.
People rightfully question if these business models were ever feasible or sustainable to begin with. But isn't that the risk they took? We can certainly recognize that being displaced before realizing profit from your work is like a kick in the pants, but isn't that always supposed to be a possible outcome? I realize that is part of why we have intellectual property rights to reward innovators - but that isn't a universal concept in this global economy.
Which, some might argue, may be the point on the global stage. It is an ideological competition as well.
Is the headline here ("OpenAI and Anthropic unite against open-weight AI risks to their bottom line") an editorialized version of the original "OpenAI and Anthropic unite against China's open models" or did Axios change theirs?
On today's episode of "AI Frontier Labs running scams": Now that the narrative of "too dangerous to be released" is not longer working since Chinese gave it all away, they have to come up with another one. You had the first glimpse this week: "Chinese frontier labs distilled our models ..." => so it should be illegal to use them in America since it's similar to illegal copy.
Regulation won't beat engineering here. China will continue to release open weight models that are impossible to ban without unprecedented surveillance in Western countries.
AI labs need to innovate if they want to win. Open models are capitalism. Ideally Western companies should get more efficient, but if we can't then we should be doing the opposite of regulation, and subsidizing western models.
AI labs need to innovate if they want to win. Open models are capitalism. Ideally Western companies should get more efficient, but if we can't then we should be doing the opposite of regulation, and subsidizing western models.
I always laugh when people defend the big AI labs and post archive.is links. Techies love copyright and ToS violations until they are targeted.
More and more these companies sound like they want to protect market share, instead of lose it to foreign models. I believe the cat's already out of the bag on this one. Regulatory capture and more export control will indeed push more people to Chinese models that are good enough right now. I'm not sure they actually realize that.
So Anthropic/OpenAI is the new Microsoft and Open Weight models are the new Linux and its cancer?
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Steve-Ballmer-call-Linux-a-can...
I guess it hurts the big AI companies knowing that AI can be way cheaper than what they sell.
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Steve-Ballmer-call-Linux-a-can...
I guess it hurts the big AI companies knowing that AI can be way cheaper than what they sell.
1) This is going to be like Electric cars. You see how far ahead China is there for commercial viability for a wider consumer base
2) There are many reasons why Anthropic and Open Ai will collapse aside from this.
3) Wait until you have non-China models that are good enough. Hint: they already exist. Microsoft partnering with Mistral is a big red flag for OpenAI and Anthropic.
2) There are many reasons why Anthropic and Open Ai will collapse aside from this.
3) Wait until you have non-China models that are good enough. Hint: they already exist. Microsoft partnering with Mistral is a big red flag for OpenAI and Anthropic.
How can distillation be considered IP theft, when IP theft is the defacto method in how the closed-weight models were trained?
If the US government was bankrolling OAI and Anthropic, and those models were free, would the situation be better?
idk if its competition?? if tech evolution from ability to distill from libgen to ability to distill from another closed source model means the closed weights models collapse, maybe claude/ openai can still evolve using ability to train further with chat logs from their users...but i think if someone makes algo that can fine tune open model on their own business logic/codebase/internal processes that is what most companies and customers want, they dont need or use 90% of the weights anyway only those that are relevant to their business processes,,then company will pay for optimized server hardware still but on their own weights if that is where they can get good tps. its always good if u own ur own weights and can fine tune but that is priveledge rn limited to large corporations not small business
The fact these two cos are bleating about this while having built their empires on IP theft is just insane.
They act like people don’t see it and then wonder why there might be any resentment towards AI companies.
I am pro AI but there has long been a cultural problem with mercenary attitudes in the big data/ML and now AI world of which this is just the latest most extreme manifestation.
They act like people don’t see it and then wonder why there might be any resentment towards AI companies.
I am pro AI but there has long been a cultural problem with mercenary attitudes in the big data/ML and now AI world of which this is just the latest most extreme manifestation.
I am very pro open source models - I use them every single day.. But we obviously don't want everyone to have capabilities like and beyond what caused the huggingface incident in every domain, so it's not like it all comes from bottom line cynicism.
At some point, is regulating AI like akin to regulating freespeech?
Hypothetically, if I released the most powerful model ever, it's full of weights and probabilities to form words in ways I like and the government said no would it be a civil rights issue?
Interesting to think about.
Hypothetically, if I released the most powerful model ever, it's full of weights and probabilities to form words in ways I like and the government said no would it be a civil rights issue?
Interesting to think about.
Frontier labs used open information paying nothing and disregarding licenses to train their models and are now trying to convince that distillation is the evil. Double standard at least.
Anthropic especially has this arrogant, “we’re smarter than you”, communication style, and acts like they’re serving some higher purpose (to the point of absurdity in some cases like “model welfare”) - I think part of all this might be the EA roots but I’m not sure. But then they get a little competition and suddenly they’re a little tattle-tale running to the government looking to artificially preserve their advantage. I’ve seen nobody who doesn’t see the naked self interest. There’s no mission, not higher purpose, not even competitive spirit, just some people that were on top and can’t handle the idea that they weren’t as special as they thought. It’s going to bite them in the long run, we’ll probably get some politically motivated legislation, but the cats out of the bag, they’ve lost all credibility and don’t even have a uniquely competitive model anymore, they’ll end up as just another also-ran.