Our position on open-weights models
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on open-weights models Announcements Our position on open-weights models Jul 27, 2026 A post by Dario Amodei, Anthropic CEO Over the last few days there has been a lot of discussion about open-weights models, especially those from China. Reports suggest that some US officials are considering banning the use of Chinese open-weights models by US companies. In response, many tech companies have signed a letter supporting open-weights models, and some people have even accused Anthropic of wanting to ban open-weights models as a means of protecting our business.
Key Takeaways
- Anyone who has read my past writing should know that I don't regard such bans as a useful measure, but let me state it clearly so that there is no doubt: Anthropic has never advocated for a ban on open-weights models.
Open-weights models that don't have dangerous capabilities are a public good: they don't cost anything besides the compute needed to run them, and they provide value to businesses, developers, and researchers.
- Specifically, I am worried about two nightmare scenarios.
It is irrelevant whether these models are released with open weights, and certainly irrelevant whether they are used by US businesses.
- Open-weights models-it does not matter whether they come from China or anywhere else-do potentially present a higher risk than closed models, because it is very difficult to apply guardrails to them or monitor their usage, and once weights are released they cannot be withdrawn 2 .
But banning the use of these models by US businesses does nothing to address this risk, because bad actors are unlikely to be legitimate US businesses.
- China has limited domestic production capacity, and therefore, due to the scaling laws , cannot build more powerful models than the US without US chips.
This is the most efficient and direct way to block threat #1, and by hampering the training of models that are out of reach of US law, it also indirectly helps with threat #2.
- It allows China to build much better models than its number of chips would ordinarily enable, and thus partially evade chip bans.
Stats & Key Facts
- #Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on open-weights models Announcements Our position on open-weights models Jul 27, 2026 A post by Dario Amodei, Anthropic CEO Over the last few days there has been a lot of discussion about open-weights models, especially those from China.
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