Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, alleged that Moonshot AI conducted a “large-scale” operation to extract capabilities from leading U.S. AI systems, including technology developed by Anthropic, News.Az reports, citing Anadolu Agency.
According to Kratsios, U.S. officials believe Moonshot used Anthropic’s Fable model to help train Kimi K3 through a process known as model distillation, in which a smaller AI model learns from the outputs of a more advanced system.
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While model distillation is widely used in AI research, Kratsios said secretly carrying it out on an industrial scale to replicate proprietary technology amounts to intellectual property theft.
“Large-scale, covert industrial distillation to steal American IP is not,” he said.
The White House also alleged that Moonshot obtained servers powered by Nvidia’s GB300 Blackwell processors and accessed similar hardware in Thailand, despite U.S. export restrictions designed to limit China’s access to advanced AI chips.
Moonshot AI has not publicly responded to the allegations. Beijing has previously rejected similar accusations, insisting that China’s AI progress is driven by domestic innovation, investment and international cooperation.
Kimi K3 drew significant attention after its launch last week, with Moonshot claiming the model can compete with leading AI systems from Anthropic and OpenAI. The company plans to release the model’s full weights on July 27, allowing developers to download and customize it.
The allegations come a day after U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Trump administration was examining whether Chinese AI companies had relied on stolen American intellectual property. He warned that companies found to have violated U.S. rules could face sanctions or be added to the Commerce Department’s Entity List.
Anthropic has previously accused Moonshot of using fraudulent accounts to generate more than 3.4 million interactions with its Claude AI models, alleging the activity targeted advanced capabilities such as coding, reasoning, data analysis and computer control.
The dispute marks another escalation in the growing U.S.-China competition over artificial intelligence and advanced semiconductors, and could further strain relations ahead of an expected meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping later this year.
