WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US President Donald Trump is under pressure to respond to the increasing success of Chinese AI models that many companies prefer to the more powerful, but pricier, American versions from Anthropic or OpenAI.

The issue came to the fore this week with the release of Kimi K3 by Moonshot, which White House officials say was developed by stealing the capabilities of Anthropic's most powerful model through a process called distillation.

The method is widely used across the industry, but US officials say Chinese firms have deployed it at scale to illicitly copy proprietary American systems.

Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, on Wednesday decried the practice and suggested that Moonshot had also circumvented US export curbs on powerful AI chips from Nvidia to build its products.

The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security is formally investigating Chinese firms like Moonshot over their use of these chips, a spokesperson told The Information.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent this week threatened sanctions against China, with reports the US is also weighing a ban or curbs on foreign-made open source models that are often built through distillation.

Earlier this year Anthropic sent letters to US lawmakers warning about the practice, formally accusing Chinese firms Moonshot, DeepSeek and MiniMax of industrial-scale distillation of its Claude models.

Illicit distillation "is IP theft and industrial espionage" and "a national challenge that creates serious national security risks for the United States and democratic allies," Sarah Heck, Anthropic's head of public policy, said on X.

Open source, or open-weight, models cost less and use source code that programmers can customize — something that is especially appreciated by startups and companies that do not want to be beholden to models from Anthropic, OpenAI or Google that cost money and must be taken as is.

Even if just floated as an idea, the startup community has asked the White House to forgo any plan to block foreign-made open source models, saying it would just unfairly reward the US AI giants, thwart competition and stick entrepreneurs with high prices for AI.

"Lobbyists are urging Washington to treat open-model AI as a security threat. In fact, it is something more familiar: proper competition that should be welcomed," wrote Bill Gurley, a former venture capitalist, in The Washington Post.

On Wednesday, a group of 179 startups wrote a letter to the Trump administration urging it to think twice against any outright ban or strict curbs on foreign-made models.

"Denying American startups access to models available abroad would stifle competition, entrench incumbents, and function as a tax on intelligence," the letter from the Little Tech Association said.

Some critics of limiting open source models believe that OpenAI and Anthropic are trying to save themselves by eliminating the emergence of this rival technology.

The two AI giants are facing huge financial pressure ahead of expected initial public offerings in coming months, with Wall Street taking a more closer look than ever at their business performance before their expected public listings.