• Some of the biggest names in tech organized a full-throated defense of open-weight AI models.
• On Friday, over two dozen companies, organizations, and platforms released an open letter.
• Among the signatories are Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, and Mistral.

In his first-ever post on X, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called attention to how some of the biggest names in AI and tech are rallying together to defend the future of open-weight AI models.

“AI will transform every industry, power every company, and be built by every country,” Huang wrote on X. “Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty.”

On Friday, Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Mistral, and others signed an open letter that urges US policymakers not to crack down on open-weight AI models.

Their statement amounts to a full-throated endorsement of open-weight AI models at a time when top Trump administration officials have suggested they might take action against Moonshot AI, the creator of the Kimi K3, the world’s most powerful open-weight AI model.

“Our AI leadership will be judged not by one frontier AI model, but by whether the United States builds a strong, open ecosystem that diffuses into every sector,” the signatories wrote in the letter.

When the letter was initially published, the two biggest absences were OpenAI and Anthropic, widely viewed as the world leaders in the frontier AI model race. However, by Friday evening, OpenAI also signed on, adding its name to the list of signatories published by Microsoft.

Unlike Anthropic‘s Fable 5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6-Sol, Kimi K3, as an open-source model, will soon be available for download and customization. Both companies would stand to gain if the US government either directly blocks or significantly impedes China-based open model makers like Moonshot AI.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said earlier on Friday he was “glad to see” the support for open weight models.

“i want the US to win in AI both in open source and proprietary models,” Altman wrote on X. Under his post, a community note, which was still present after OpenAI was added to the signatories list, claimed OpenAI had “refused” to sign the letter.

While SpaceXAI is not listed as a signatory, Elon Musk later signaled his support for the message. “This has my full support,” Musk wrote on X, quoting Huang’s tweet. “Jensen is right.”

Google also has not yet officially signed the letter. Google CEO Sundar Pichai, however, showed his support on Saturday. He agreed with Huang in a post on X. “Very happy to support this on behalf of Google,” he wrote.

That leaves Anthropic as the only major AI company yet to support open-source models.

While the letter does not mention Moonshot specifically, its authors portray the broader development of open AI models as akin to how open software revolutionized computing in the 1980s.

“Open source did more than lower the cost of software; it created a shared foundation of knowledge on which generations of American engineers and entrepreneurs built their institutional sovereignty,” they wrote.

China has thus far dominated the development of open-weight AI models, despite the US’ legendary reputation in the creation of open-source software. Two of the biggest modern names in open software, Mozilla and the Linux Foundation, also signed onto the letter.

In the US, Nvidia’s Nemotron model is one of the largest open weight models, though its performance pales in comparison to rivals like Kimi K3. Alexandr Wang, chief AI officer of Meta, has said that his Meta Superintelligence Labs team remains committed to open models and is developing an open variant of its Muse Spark model. Reflection AI, a startup founded by former Google DeepMind researchers, is also preparing its own open model.

On Wednesday, Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, publicly accused Moonshot of developing Kimi K3 by distilling the model from Anthropic’s Fable 5. Distillation, the process of training a weaker model on the outputs of a stronger one, is a controversial yet widely used practice in AI development. At the same time, companies like Anthropic have accused their Chinese counterparts of abusing the distillation process to the point of essentially ripping off their intellectual property.

Earlier this week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested that the US could sanction companies that engage in such distillation, which he compared to theft.

The letter defends the distillation process more broadly, but it does open the door to the possibility that companies like Nvidia, Microsoft, and Meta would support a crackdown on those proven to be bad actors.

“Unlawful efforts to extract value from closed models raise legitimate concerns,” they wrote. “Those concerns should be addressed through targeted legal and commercial frameworks rather than sweeping restrictions on techniques that play an important role in AI innovation.”

In total, a combination of 32 companies, organizations, and platforms signed on to the letter as of Friday evening. They are the American Innovators Network, Andreessen Horowitz, Arcee AI, Arena, Black Forest Labs, Box, Cisco, Cohere, CrowdStrike, Dell Technologies, DoorDash, Emergence Capital, Fireworks AI, GitHub, Hugging Face, IBM, The Linux Foundation, Mariana Minerals, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral, Mozilla, Nvidia, OpenAI, Palantir, Palo Alto Networks, Perplexity, Reflection, Replit, ServiceNow, Telnyx, and Y Combinator.

• Gardening helps my family save up to $500 monthly on produce.
• It also helps my children appreciate food, teaching them the value of homegrown produce.
• Despite initial upfront costs, it offers ongoing savings and an unexpected sense of stillness.

If you had asked me five years ago whether I’d be spending part of my morning checking on tomato plants or celebrating the first strawberry of the season, I would have laughed.

Between raising two daughters with my husband and running two businesses, my days are carefully orchestrated. My calendar is filled with client meetings, strategy sessions, school pickups, and the thousand small responsibilities that come with parenting. Gardening simply didn’t fit into the picture I had of my life.

I’ve also never been someone who meticulously tracked grocery prices or planned shopping trips around weekly sales. Convenience usually wins. But over the last few years, even someone like me couldn’t ignore how dramatically the cost of fresh food has changed.

It wasn’t that we suddenly couldn’t afford groceries. It was the realization that we were spending an astonishing amount on produce that disappeared almost as quickly as we brought it home.

My 7-year-old daughter could happily eat strawberries every day if we let her. Fresh herbs rarely lasted the week before wilting. Tomatoes, cucumbers, salad greens, and blueberries were staples in our home, yet I felt like I was constantly replacing them.

Then my mom offered a suggestion that completely changed how I thought about our grocery bill.

My parents have always had incredible gardens. Growing up, our yard was filled with flowers, herbs, and vegetables, and in recent years, it expanded into a greenhouse that produces everything from corn to melons to peppers and so much more. I admired what they had built, but I viewed it as a retirement hobby, not something realistic for me as a busy entrepreneur.

One afternoon, after hearing me complain once again about how quickly my daughters were working their way through yet another container of strawberries, my mom simply said, “Why don’t you just grow them?”

When she told me their garden was saving them between $100 to $200 every month during the growing season (which is May through October, where we live in Maryland), my perspective shifted. The financial savings were impressive, but what intrigued me even more was the possibility of becoming a little less dependent on constant trips to the grocery store.

I started off small

I decided to start with what felt manageable: a few tomato plants, mint, basil, and a handful of herbs.

There was no grand plan to become self-sufficient or transform my backyard into a miniature farm. I simply wanted to see whether growing a few things myself would make a meaningful difference.

It did.

What began as a small experiment gradually evolved into something bigger. Each season, I found myself adding another fruit, another vegetable, another lesson. Three years later, our garden produces strawberries, blueberries, collard greens, broccoli, squash, peppers, watermelon, cucumbers, onions, potatoes, lettuce, herbs, and more.

The financial impact surprised me, too. During peak growing season, our garden offsets roughly $500 worth of produce for our family of four each month. The items that once seemed to dominate every grocery receipt are often waiting just steps outside our back door instead.

Fresh herbs are probably the most satisfying example. Before gardening, I’d spend money on basil, cilantro, parsley, or mint only to use a portion before the rest inevitably spoiled in the refrigerator. Now, I harvest exactly what I need moments before cooking. Nothing goes to waste because nothing sits forgotten in the produce drawer.

The same is true for tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and lettuce. Instead of adding them to every grocery list, we’re picking them ourselves for salads, sandwiches, or dinner that evening.

Gardening is still an investment of time and money

Of course, gardening isn’t free. There are upfront costs for raised beds (about $225), soil ($100), fertilizer ($60), tools ($100), and seeds and plants ($60).

There are also disappointments. Not every seed thrives. Some crops produce more than others. Pests like caterpillars, slugs, and Japanese beetles occasionally remind you that you’re sharing the harvest with nature.

But unlike so many household expenses, the investment continues paying dividends season after season for our family. Many plants return each year, and every growing season teaches me how to become more efficient than the last.

The most meaningful return, however, has had nothing to do with money. My daughters now understand that food simply doesn’t appear on grocery shelves. They’ve watched tiny seedlings become meals we share around our kitchen table. They celebrate the first ripe strawberry of summer. They race outside to see whether another watermelon has grown overnight. Vegetables become infinitely more exciting when they’ve helped water them and patiently waited for them to mature.

As someone whose professional life revolves around strategy and deadlines, gardening has also become an unexpected form of stillness. There is something profoundly grounding about stepping outside before opening my laptop, harvesting vegetables for dinner, or watering plants without checking my phone every few minutes.

Ironically, what I once dismissed as another responsibility has become one of the few activities that consistently pulls me into the present moment.

• Ellie Bamber trained for more than two years to portray Kate Moss.
• Her trainer focused on strength training instead of excessive cardio.
• The approach avoided calorie counting and restrictive dieting.

It was the era of heroin chic. When iconic supermodel Kate Moss was at the height of her modeling career in the 1990s, she was often pictured at clubs with a cigarette, a far cry from today’s trends of Pilates and matcha lattes.

So when actor Ellie Bamber came to play Moss in the recently released movie “Moss & Freud,” she had her work cut out. How to create Moss’s supermodel physique without resorting to unhealthy methods?

She worked with trainer Luke Worthington

Bamber, who has also starred in “Red, White & Royal Blue” and “William Tell,” worked with film and TV personal trainer Luke Worthington to prepare to embody Moss, a process that ultimately took years due to various filming delays.

Worthington and Bamber started working together in January 2022 and focused on film prep from December of that year, expecting to shoot in summer 2023. Filming was postponed until spring/summer 2024. They also had to contend with a fractured ankle, but they got Bamber ready to play Moss with a startling likeness.

“Ultimately, it wasn’t going to be a perfect like-for-like, but we wanted to try to get as close to Kate as we could, but it was really important for both of us that I remained really healthy,” Bamber told Business Insider. “One of the goals was also for me to feel good, because I’m nude quite a lot in the film and that’s kind of daunting in itself, so I just wanted to feel really in tune with my body and really confident.”

In 2017, Kate Moss told The Guardian that she never used to eat salads or go to the gym. “Ellie was portraying somebody who perhaps wasn’t overly health-conscious at that particular phase of their life, but compromising her health was never going to be something that we would consider,” said Worthington.

Here’s how they made it happen.

High-intensity strength training

Bamber did high-intensity strength training at least three times a week, sometimes as many as five or six, but the extra sessions were a bonus. They would typically ratchet up training before supposedly starting filming, and then dial back to a more sustainable routine when things got delayed.

Worthington had Bamber working in tri-sets consisting of an upper-body exercise, a lower-body exercise, and a core exercise, back-to-back. This means that the blood rushes from one area of the body to another, improving cardiovascular capacity and building strength.

“For example, she’s doing a set of squats and a set of push-ups. If you do those on their own, they are strengthening exercises. If you do them back to back, there’s the metabolic demands, the caloric demand of that goes exponentially higher,” Worthington said. “So, by being smart about how we grouped exercises together, it meant that we could be quite efficient with the workouts and not keep her in the gym for hours. She’s getting free cardio, basically.”

When Bamber fell off a horse while filming a different movie and broke her ankle, training had to be a little more creative. Alongside seeing a physio, Bamber would come to the gym on crutches with her boot on, and Worthington would have her do modified exercises targeting the rest of her body.

Slimming without calorie-counting

Strength training was also an important part of helping Bamber maintain muscle mass while sculpting a supermodel physique through a gentle calorie deficit.

“I love pasta, and I still want to be able to go out for dinner with my friends,” Bamber said, so she didn’t want to follow a restrictive diet plan.

With that in mind, there was no calorie-counting or weighing herself. They used photos to track Bamber’s progress and aimed for a calorie deficit of no more than 10% (without strictly tracking). Worthington suggested loosely measuring portion sizes using her hands. The aim was to make slow, gradual changes, he said.

“Slow and steady wins the race, and we communicated all the time about how Ellie’s energy, mood, and concentration were, so we could see if we were pushing too hard,” Worthington added.

She often drank smoothies for breakfast

When she needed a weekend “off,” she had it.

“The harder it is for someone, the less easy it is for them to stick to it,” Worthington said. “So if we make one change at a time, and try to keep those changes manageable, you’ve got more of a chance of sticking to it, which means you get the result that you want.”

The nutrition strategy evolved: For most of the prep, Bamber tried to eat six portions of cruciferous vegetables (like broccoli and cauliflower) per day, meaning she filled up on low-calorie, high-volume, nutritious foods. The focus was on adding, rather than subtracting.

She often drank a breakfast smoothie consisting of greens, fruit, protein, and flax seeds. “It was an easy way of getting a load of nutrients and a good amount of protein at the start of the day without excessive calories,” Worthington said. This then evolved to a yogurt bowl with skyr and similar ingredients.

While recovering from her fractured ankle, she moved to an intentional calorie surplus with plenty of protein to promote healing for six weeks.

Later in the process, Bamber began intermittent fasting while maintaining flexibility. If filming started early, she would eat earlier to have enough energy.

“It was about finding a balance of pushing myself as hard as I could, but then also knowing that if I needed to back off, that was OK,” said Bamber.

• After attending pastry school in France, I’ve learned the secrets to creating the perfect desserts.
• I often see home bakers make the same mistakes, like using expired leaveners or crowding the oven.
• Other common mistakes include overmixing the batter and opening the oven too frequently.

I’m a full-time baker who has attended pastry school in France, completed a baking course in China, and worked in several bakeries in New York City.

After working in the industry for many years and making dozens of cakes, croissants, and cookies, I’ve learned the secrets for success when making a dessert — even if it’s not in the luxury of a professional kitchen.

Here are the seven most common mistakes I see from home bakers, and how to fix them.

Measuring ingredients by volume instead of using a kitchen scale can lead to inconsistent results.

No matter what I’m baking, I avoid measuring cups whenever possible, since they’re not very precise and can lead to pastries that are either too dry or too wet.

The volume in a cup can vary depending on how tightly the ingredient is packed, how it’s scooped, and whether it’s leveled correctly.

To prevent inaccuracies, I like to use a kitchen scale instead. This allows me to measure out the exact same amount of each ingredient, so I always know I’m getting consistent results.

Plus, I find it makes scaling recipes up or down much easier.

I often see bakers make adjustments to a recipe without understanding the science.

Once a treat goes into the oven, the batter or dough triggers several chemical reactions before it’s fully baked.

So, trying to adjust ingredients or make substitutions without fully understanding their role in a recipe might drastically impact the taste.

Sugar, for example, does much more than add sweetness. It attracts and retains moisture, helps baked goods brown, and supports the spread and texture of cookies and cakes. Reducing it too much can produce a dessert that is not only less sweet but also drier, denser, paler, and less tender.

For reliable results, I always follow the recipe as written the first time. And whenever I make adjustments, I change only one ingredient at a time and consider its effect on the final product.

Overmixing the batter can lead to tough pastries.

I find that many home bakers tend to overmix their dough or cake batter, resulting in a tough, dense texture.

For many kinds of baked goods, I think it’s best to simply mix until combined.

Instead of using a stand mixer, I like to use a spatula and mix in the remaining dry ingredients by hand.

Using expired baking powder, baking soda, or yeast is a recipe for disaster.

Before baking anything, I always double-check that my leaveners — like baking soda, baking powder, or yeast — are not expired.

If the expiration date has passed, those ingredients will not have the strength to make a cake or any baked good rise, resulting in poor texture.

Opening the oven too often results in a drier bake.

If I ever open the oven door while something is baking, heat will inevitably escape, lowering the temperature, extending the baking time, and potentially causing the pastry or cake to lose moisture.

Opening the door too early can be especially damaging to delicate bakes like cakes, soufflés, and choux pastry, since the sudden temperature change can interrupt the rising process and cause them to sink or collapse.

As tempting as it is to peek, I always keep the oven door closed for at least the first two-thirds of the recommended baking time.

Whenever I need to check the progress, I’ll use the oven light and watch through the window, then open the door only when I’m ready to rotate the pan or test for doneness.

Overcrowding the oven with multiple pans prevents desserts from baking evenly.

Adding too many pans to an oven can affect the cook time, as each pan absorbs heat from the other, leading to uneven baking.

To prevent this, I recommend using the convection setting to circulate heat more evenly, or rotating pans between the upper and lower racks while baking.

I never like to leave the dishes to the end.

Baking often requires a lot of bowls and dishes for each step, but allowing them to pile up can make the process feel overwhelming.

While my pastries are in the oven or the dough is chilling, I like to use that time to wipe down the countertops and wash some dishes.

This way, I can enjoy the final product without stressing over the mess.

• Donald Trump plans a trade probe into the EU over fines against Google and other US tech firms.
• The EU fined Google $1 billion for unfair competition, prompting threats of US trade investigations.
• Trump accuses the EU of targeting US tech giants like Apple, Meta, and Amazon with unfair fines.

New tariffs could be on the horizon — this time over Silicon Valley.

Donald Trump said Friday his administration will open a trade investigation into the European Union after regulators fined Google about $1 billion, a probe that could pave the way for steep new tariffs on the bloc.

In a Truth Social post, Trump said that the EU unfairly targets American technology companies and said the US would immediately launch a Section 301 investigation into what he described as discriminatory treatment of US businesses.

“The European Union is at it again and, as usual, taking direct aim at GREAT American Companies!” Trump wrote, “The United States of America is not a ‘PIGGYBANK’ for Europe.”

“The European Union will pay a very big price for this illegal and highly unethical conduct, which I have consistently warned them about,” Trump added.

Trump also criticized previous EU penalties against Apple, Meta, and Amazon, saying that the bloc had repeatedly singled out US firms.

Trump’s comments came a day after the European Commission fined Google €890 million (about $1 billion), saying the company violated the EU’s Digital Markets Act by steering users of Google Search and Google Play toward its own services instead of rivals’. The commission said in a press statement that the action was intended to protect competition and consumers.

“The best products should succeed because they’re better, not because they’re owned by the company running the search engine,” Teresa Ribera, the European Commission’s executive vice president for clean, just and competitive transition, said in a statement.

The latest clash adds to a yearslong dispute between Brussels and Silicon Valley. In 2025, the EU imposed Digital Markets Act penalties of €500 million on Apple and €200 million on Meta after finding that the companies had breached the bloc’s competition rules.

The White House and Google did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

• Guilt was a parenting tool passed down through generations in my family.
• I intentionally rejected that approach while raising my five children.
• Now I’m learning that asking for connection isn’t the same as manipulation.

I come from a long line of mothers who have mastered the art of guilt as manipulation.

I believe it started with my great-grandmother. I never met her, but I’ve been told that she ruled her home with an iron fist in a velvet glove, commanding her 11 children to bend to her will. The stories my mother told me of visits to her grandmother’s home painted a picture of a dark and foreboding place.

I was never intimidated by my grandmother

My grandmother, Dora’s daughter, was different. She doted on my brother and me, focusing all her attention on us when she came for her weekly Sunday visits. She brought us the treats our parents rarely allowed, including a coconut cake for my brother and a chocolate one for me.

My mother was her only child and basked in the adoration of her and my grandfather. A gorgeous baby, my mother won several beauty contests and eventually became a model. She was very smart, skipping two grades and enrolling in college at age 16. Although she wanted to live in a dorm and enjoy the full college experience, her parents nixed the idea and demanded she attend a local public university and live at home.

Even after my parents got married, my grandmother still exercised an extraordinary level of control. A few years ago, I found the telegram she sent the day after my parents’ wedding, demanding to know why they had not notified their parents of their safe arrival at their honeymoon destination in Mexico. No words of congratulations or expressions of joy, only the question, “Did you survive your flight or are you lying dead in a field somewhere following a fiery crash?”

When I became a mom, I was determined to break the pattern

The fact that my mother hated how her mother influenced her actions did not prevent her from repeating the pattern with me. The focus was always on her. When I was in college, she required me to call home every Sunday morning to check in. If I missed a week, she called me, never asking if I was OK, but reminding me of my obligation to see how she was doing.

Even before my five children were born, I already knew I would not use guilt to manipulate them. In fact, I intentionally swerved in the opposite direction. While my mother always took center stage, I chose to watch from the wings, cheering my kids on in all their endeavors.

I think I may have gone too far in the opposite direction, though. Now that they are adults, I have no expectation that they’ll prioritize me in their lives and carve out time to meet up, or even call me weekly. My mantra is, “Keep your expectations low, and you’re never disappointed.”

That’s not right either, so I’m striving for a happy medium with just a modicum of guilt-inducement. Instead of responding to their texts asking how I’m doing with an everything’s fine, I’m going to let them know when I’m having a tough day, feeling sad, or missing them. Instead of waiting for a dinner invitation, I’m going to make reservations for a meal together. I’m inviting them to spend Sunday afternoons with me and taking them up on their offer to visit their homes whenever I feel like it.

It’s taking effort for me to make this shift, but I want them to know how much better I feel when I can honestly tell them I need them. In an effort to counter the behaviors of the generations of mothers before me, I don’t have to go guilt-free; I just need to be strategic in how I apply the guilt.