NVIDIA has assembled nearly 40 technology companies behind a new initiative to build open source security tools for AI, although the coalition launches without participation from several of the industry’s most influential AI developers.
Announced on July 27, the Open Secure AI Alliance members including Adobe, Cisco, Microsoft, CloudStrike, Space X, SAP and the Linux Foundation.
However, big-name AI vendors including Google, Anthropic and OpenAI were notable absences from the initial list of signatories.
The alliance – which builds on the Linux Foundation’s Akrites initiative and OpenSSF community work – will focus much of its effort on finding, fixing and disclosing vulnerabilities in AI products.
Read more on AI threats: AI Agents Now the Enterprises Fastest Growing Exposed Attack Surface.
“Across the alliance, contributors are building an open defense stack for agents – from identity and isolation to safe model formats, multi-model scanning and secure coding workflows,” said NVIDIA in a blog post.
“Defenders need both frontier closed models and frontier open models, working together, so they can choose the right system for the job and ensure that transparency, adaptation and sovereign control are available wherever security demands them.”
While it is not clear why Google, Anthropic and OpenAI are not part of the initiative, one industry CISO noted that broader participation and clearer accountability is needed to improve the NVIDIA initiative’s chances of success.
Exabeam CISO, Kevin Kirkwood said, “The major frontier model developers need to be at the table, and the industry needs agreed rules for liability when an agent exceeds scope. Better tools help defenders fight dark AI. Better governance keeps the defensive tools from becoming part of the problem.”
Hugging Face Incident Reinforces Open Source Message
The move comes just days after a serious and unprecedented incident last week in which two OpenAI models autonomously broke out of a sandbox and hacked Hugging Face’s production systems.
Hugging Face revealed that it was forced to use an open-weight Chinese model to repel the attack because safety filters on proprietary US equivalents limited their usefulness.
As the Trump administration mulls whether to restrict access to such models, the NVIDIA alliance is arguing for more openness.
“The right response is not to deny defenders access to capable open systems. It is to pair openness with strong safeguards, clear rules against malicious misuse, rigorous evaluation and rapid remediation,” it said.
“In cybersecurity, the safer path is the one that gives more defenders the ability to test, verify and strengthen the systems on which society relies.”
Experts Remain Skeptical
Gene Moody, field CTO at Action1, said the launch of the alliance is recognition of the fact that “the technology is advancing faster than many organizations can responsibly govern it.”
However, he questioned whether it would have the required impact.
“Open source models already exist by the thousands, many capable of running entirely on local hardware, disconnected from any cloud service or vendor oversight. Once a model is operating in isolation, safety controls become just another layer of software,” said Moody.
“They can be modified, removed, retrained, or replaced altogether. You cannot program a conscience into an artificial intelligence. You can only program behaviors, and behaviors are subject to manipulation by anyone with sufficient technical skill.”
Black Hills Information Security owner, John Strand, was similarly skeptical.
“As researchers continue to show AI systems escaping their intended boundaries or interacting with other systems in unexpected ways, concerns about AI safety are growing,” he said.
“That’s why you’re seeing so many new AI security initiatives. In many cases, they’re trying to establish industry standards before governments step in with legislation or regulation. Whether those efforts are enough remains to be seen.”
