{"id":241413,"date":"2026-07-23T04:06:41","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T09:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/startup-founders-urge-trump-not-to-shut-off-chinese-open-weight-ai"},"modified":"2026-07-23T04:06:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T09:06:41","slug":"startup-founders-urge-trump-not-to-shut-off-chinese-open-weight-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/startup-founders-urge-trump-not-to-shut-off-chinese-open-weight-ai","title":{"rendered":"Startup founders urge Trump not to shut off Chinese open weight AI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/startup-founders-urge-trump-not-to-shut-off-chinese-open-weight-ai.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Almost 200 Silicon Valley companies, including Proton and Y Combinator, are urging the Trump administration not to cut off access to Chinese open-weight artificial intelligence models or risk crippling the next generation of U.S. startups.<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday, the <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/subscriber.politicopro.com\/article\/2026\/07\/startups-launch-new-k-street-counterweight-to-big-tech-00993757\" data-track-click=\"{'click_type':'other','element_name':'body_link','event':'outbound_click'}\" rel=\" nofollow\" data-analytics-post-depth=\"20\" data-mrf-link=\"https:\/\/subscriber.politicopro.com\/article\/2026\/07\/startups-launch-new-k-street-counterweight-to-big-tech-00993757\" cmp-ltrk=\"post body content\" cmp-ltrk-idx=\"0\" mrfobservableid=\"b6237313-508e-4c0a-85d4-9b2de7b9e70e\"]newly-formed Little Tech Association<\/a> sent letters to President Donald Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and others in the administration with its appeal, marking the first coordinated effort by Silicon Valley\u2019s wider influential startup community to weigh in on one of the Trump administration\u2019s most closely watched AI debates. At issue: whether Washington should restrict access to increasingly powerful open-weight \u2014 meaning, AI models whose weights are publicly available \u2014 AI models released by Chinese companies such as Moonshot AI and Alibaba.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAmerican leadership requires two things: world-leading American open-weight models and continued access for U.S. builders to open models already available worldwide,\u201d the startup founders wrote in <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/static.politico.com\/4a\/bf\/9c4021d8404386b0a311dcccf0e5\/lta-open-weight-ai-letter-7-22-26.pdf\" data-track-click=\"{'click_type':'other','element_name':'body_link','event':'outbound_click'}\" rel=\" nofollow\" data-analytics-post-depth=\"20\" data-mrf-link=\"https:\/\/static.politico.com\/4a\/bf\/9c4021d8404386b0a311dcccf0e5\/lta-open-weight-ai-letter-7-22-26.pdf\" cmp-ltrk=\"post body content\" cmp-ltrk-idx=\"1\" mrfobservableid=\"293ec737-5df5-4a8b-95a4-bde7df2f203D\"]the letter obtained by POLITICO<\/a>, also sent to Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios. Instead of broad prohibitions, they argue the government should adopt targeted safeguards\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Almost 200 Silicon Valley companies, including Proton and Y Combinator, are urging the Trump administration not to cut off access to Chinese open-weight artificial intelligence models or risk crippling the next generation of U.S. startups. On Wednesday, the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}