Sacks: Restricting Open-Source AI Won't Stop Chinese Tech Dominance

David Sacks, former White House AI and crypto czar, has weighed in on the debate over open-source AI models. In a recent post on X, he argued that restricting such models would not prevent Chinese labs from developing similar technology.

Sacks cited the example of Harvey's new Tenet model, built on the open-source Kimi K3 base and trained with Fireworks AI. According to Sacks, this approach demonstrates how American companies can build high-performance tools at a fraction of the cost of proprietary models.

He noted that Kimi K3 is a massive 2.8 trillion-parameter model from Chinese startup Moonshot, which briefly outranked Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 in July. Sacks and investor Bill Ackman had earlier expressed concern over Kimi K3's benchmark rise at the time.

Harvey's Tenet model posted an 82% improvement in all-pass rate on the LAB legal benchmark and achieved state-of-the-art results on LAB Contracts, according to Harvey. The company plans to expand the system to more legal jurisdictions and practice areas.