US President Donald Trump's science and technology adviser Michael Kratsios has accused Chinese company Moonshot AI of stealing technology from American startup Anthropic on a large scale. According to him, the Beijing developers used a "distillation" method to copy the capabilities of the Fable model to create their own AI.
US President Donald Trump's science and technology adviser Michael Kratsios has accused Chinese company Moonshot AI of stealing technology from American startup Anthropic on a large scale. According to him, the Beijing developers used a "distillation" method to copy the capabilities of the Fable model to create their own AI.
Kratsios told X that the US government has information that Moonshot AI has "distilled" the capabilities of Anthropic's Fable AI to develop its own K3 model, the BBC reports .
According to Kratsios, Moonshot also gained access to Nvidia's limited-use advanced servers to train its models.
We have information that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic's Fable for the development of its K3 model.
— Director Michael Kratsios (@mkratsios47) July 22, 2026
To do this they developed a sophisticated internal platform to conduct large scale distillation against US models, allowing them to quickly switch between multiple methods of…
The Kimi K3 model has attracted global attention since its announcement last week, with many believing it has managed to bridge the gap between Western and Chinese AI models. Moonshot said its K3 model is capable of competing with leading American technology.
Kratsios noted that Moonshot likely also used servers based on the Nvidia GB300 Grace Blackwell computing platform.
Washington restricted exports of Nvidia's most advanced chips back in 2022 over concerns they could be used by the Chinese military. Since then, governments around the world have taken a tougher stance against smuggling these chips.
Kratsios' accusations came just a day after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant said on Tuesday that the US would investigate whether Chinese AI models had stolen capabilities from their American competitors.
The Chinese government has not yet made a public statement in response to the latest allegations, but has previously noted that the country's development of artificial intelligence is "the result of its own efforts and perseverance, as well as international cooperation."
Recall that in June, Anthropic accused Chinese e-commerce and technology giant Alibaba of “illegally” removing the capabilities of its Claude AI models through “distillation attacks.” Anthropic called on Congress to impose sanctions on the companies behind these alleged attacks, as well as to strengthen measures to prevent the theft of American technology.
