Nvidia , Microsoft , Meta , Palantir and more than 20 other companies released a letter Friday urging policymakers to avoid "premature restrictions" on open-weight artificial intelligence models that would "stifle competition or drive innovation overseas." Open-weight AI models are available for users to download, modify and run on their own infrastructure, and they have been the subject of fierce debate within the tech sector in recent weeks. Chinese open-weight models are  gaining steam  against leading offerings from American companies like OpenAI and Anthropic , which primarily develop proprietary, closed models. Officials and executives have been weighing whether or not to restrict access to Chinese models in the U.S. Moonshot AI, a Chinese startup, amplified concerns earlier this month after releasing a model called  Kimi K3  that outperforms cutting-edge American offerings across some industry benchmarks. U.S.…