Alibaba Bans Employees from Using Anthropic's Claude Code
Original: Alibaba reportedly bans employees from using Claude Code
Why This Matters
Highlights growing US-China AI access tensions as major Chinese firms pivot to domestic AI tools.
Alibaba will ban employees from using Anthropic's AI coding tool Claude Code starting July 10, 2026, classifying it as high-risk software. Employees are directed to use Alibaba's own Qoder tool instead, amid Anthropic's ongoing efforts to block Chinese users from accessing its models.
China's Alibaba has reportedly banned employees from using Anthropic's AI programming assistant Claude Code, effective July 10, 2026. The company has classified Claude Code as high-risk software and is instructing staff to switch to its in-house alternative, Qoder.
The move comes as Anthropic already prohibits Chinese companies — and foreign entities owned by them — from using its models. Anthropic has been actively working to close loopholes that allowed Chinese users to access Claude. A recent Reddit post alleged that one such measure involved a version of Claude Code capable of covertly identifying Chinese users.
Anthropicʼs Thariq Shihipar addressed the claim on X, stating it was 'an experiment we launched in March that was meant to prevent account abuse from unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation.' He added that 'the team has landed stronger mitigations since then and we've actually been meaning to take this down for a while.' Distillation refers to the practice of training AI models on the outputs of other AI models.