Y Combinator’s Garry Tan wants US open-weight AI labs to ‘distill’ frontier models, too

AITopTools Editorial TeamSeptember 11, 2026

What changed

Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan is urging smaller U.S. AI labs to use a technique called distillation, in which a smaller model learns from a more capable one. His goal is to expand the supply of U.S.-made open-weight AI models rather than relying mainly on Chinese alternatives.

What this means for you

This is a proposal, not a new product, so it does not create an immediately available model or change current costs. If U.S. labs adopt the approach, developers and businesses could eventually have more open models to use and adapt.

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