A top White House official is escalating the fight over Moonshot AI’s viral Kimi K3 model

A top White House official publicly accused Moonshot AI of essentially stealing from Anthropic, intensifying the debate over China-based open source AI models.

“We have information that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic’s Fable for the development of its K3 model,” Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote on X Wednesday morning.

Kratsios said Moonshot AI, the maker of the viral Kimi K3 model, went to great lengths to conceal its actions.

“To do this they developed a sophisticated internal platform to conduct large scale distillation against U.S. models, allowing them to quickly switch between multiple methods of access to avoid detection,” he wrote.

Kimi K3 is widely regarded as the most impressive open source AI model released thus far. Moonshot’s model has performed at or above the level of Anthropic and OpenAI’s leading frontier models in benchmark testing. It is likely that both US companies spent billions developing those models. In contrast, Moonshot is expected to make Kimi K3 freely available for download on local devices and customizable to a user’s content when it releases the model’s full weights next week.

Distillation by itself is not wrong, a point that Kratsios stressed in his statement. AI labs themselves use the process of training a less powerful model on the output of a more powerful model before releasing updates.

“Legitimate AI distillation used to create smaller, more efficient models plays a vital role in this open innovation ecosystem,” he wrote. “However, large-scale, covert industrial distillation aimed at stealing proprietary U.S. technology and undermining American research is unacceptable.”

Kratsios’ statement comes after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested that the US government may sanction Chinese companies if it is proven that their models were improperly trained through a process called distillation.

The White House’s words so far are notable, as they mark a rare instance in which the Trump administration does not find itself at loggerheads with Anthropic. The Trump administration previously imposed export controls to block Anthropic from releasing Fable 5, its most advanced model, and in February the Pentagon moved to blacklist the AI giant.

“Thanks @mkratsios47 for speaking out on this important issue,” Sarah Heck, Anthropic’s head of public policy, wrote on X, quoting Kratsios’ statement.

Heck said Anthropic will continue to work with the White House and Congress on the issue.

“Illicit, adversarial distillation is IP theft and industrial espionage that supports adversary military and intelligence capabilities,” she wrote. “It is a national challenge that creates serious national security risks for the United States and democratic allies.”

Increasingly, US companies have said that their Chinese competitors have abused the process to rip off their intellectual property. In February, Anthropic publicly accused three companies, including Moonshot AI, of using distillation attacks that violate its terms of service.

A spokesperson for Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.