China's Moonshot AI stole from Anthropic, Trump tech adviser says - BBC

What the report says

BBC News reported that Michael Kratsios, science and technology adviser to US President Donald Trump, accused Beijing-based Moonshot AI of a “large scale” effort to copy capabilities from leading American artificial intelligence systems. In a post on X on Wednesday, Kratsios said the company used “distillation,” a technique in which a smaller or less capable model learns from the outputs of a stronger one, to help develop its Kimi K3 model.

According to the BBC, Kratsios also alleged Moonshot accessed restricted Nvidia servers powered by the GB300 Grace Blackwell platform for model training. The BBC said it contacted Moonshot, Anthropic, the White House and Nvidia for comment. The Chinese embassy in Washington referred the broadcaster to remarks by foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian, who said China opposes politicising trade and technology issues and supports AI development for shared benefit.

The allegations come as Washington increases scrutiny of Chinese AI firms. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US would examine whether Chinese models had taken capabilities from American rivals, and later said sanctions could be considered in cases involving intellectual property theft through “industrial-scale” distillation. US export controls have limited shipments of Nvidia’s most advanced chips to China since 2022, citing national security concerns.

Moonshot’s Kimi K3, unveiled last week, drew attention because the company says it can compete with top US systems. BBC reported the model is expected to be released as open source on 27 July, allowing developers and the public to download and modify it. The dispute adds to wider US-China tensions over AI technology ahead of an expected Trump-Xi meeting in September.