A top White House official accused Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI of covertly copying Anthropic's technology.
Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Michael Kratsios stated that Moonshot illegally distilled Anthropic's "Fable" model to build its own AI.
The White House signaled close monitoring as US Treasury officials warned of potential economic sanctions.
Context
Moonshot AI recently released its Kimi K3 model, showcasing high-level capabilities that rival top Western systems.
The model is remarkably similar to Anthropic's technology because Moonshot allegedly trained Kimi K3 using outputs extracted directly from Fable.
US officials view this large-scale distillation as an illicit shortcut to clone proprietary American intellectual property.
Key Details
Moonshot reportedly built a custom internal platform to run large-scale distillation while constantly switching access methods to evade detection.
To power its operations, the company acquired advanced Nvidia GB300 chips and accessed GB300-equipped servers located in Thailand.
Using overseas server infrastructure provided a direct workaround to strict US export controls restricting high-end semiconductors to China.
Implications
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that foreign companies stealing American technology face direct economic sanctions.
Bessent revealed that federal authorities discovered digital watermarks from American language models embedded within Chinese systems.
The Treasury Department indicated it will formally evaluate these intellectual property violations in the coming weeks.
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