The White House has accused Chinese firm Moonshot AI of stealing U.S. technology, alleging it used banned Nvidia GB300 chips and "distilled" Anthropic's Fable model to create its high-performing Kimi K3 AI. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent threatened sanctions over the alleged IP theft. Anthropic endorsed the claims, calling the practice a national security risk, escalating the U.S.-China tech competition from hardware to AI models themselves.
Moonshot AI distillation accusations
- ▪In February, before the White House's statement, Anthropic had accused Moonshot AI and two other Chinese firms of using distillation attacks that violated its terms of service
- ▪Michael Kratsios alleged Moonshot AI used a "sophisticated internal platform" for large-scale distillation against U.S. models while trying to avoid detection
- ▪White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios accused China-based Moonshot AI of distilling Anthropic's Fable model to develop its Kimi K3 model
- ▪The White House accused Moonshot AI of acquiring servers with banned Nvidia GB300 chips and accessing them in Thailand to train its models
Kimi K3 model performance
- ▪Moonshot AI's Kimi K3, an open-weight model, has performed at or above the level of leading models from Anthropic and OpenAI on some industry benchmarks
- ▪Moonshot AI plans to release the full weights for its Kimi K3 model on July 27, making it freely available for download and customization
US government response
- ▪U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated the U.S. could sanction Chinese AI companies if they are found to have engaged in intellectual property theft
- ▪The U.S. government has previously restricted China's access to advanced chips and tightened export controls to maintain its lead in AI
- ▪Scott Bessent said the U.S. is "finding watermarks of our U.S. large language models on many of the Chinese models."
Anthropic's position
- ▪Anthropic agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement with authors who alleged the company illegally downloaded and stored copyrighted books to train its AI
- ▪Anthropic's head of public policy, Sarah Heck, publicly supported the White House's accusation, calling illicit distillation "IP theft and industrial espionage."
- ▪Sarah Heck stated that adversarial distillation creates "serious national security risks for the United States and democratic allies."
Story comments
Loading comments…