- Alibaba bans access to Claude Code, tells employees to use internal Qoder instead
- Anthropic tracked markers to indicate which users were in China
- Anthropic Accused Alibaba of Major Claude Model Distillation Effort
Alibaba reportedly banned its employees from using Claude Code internally starting July 10, 2026, classifying it as a high-risk tool that puts the organization’s security at risk.
The change follows similar trends already seen among American tech giants banning the internal use of Chinese tools, but Alibaba cited genuine concerns that have been acknowledged by Anthropic, maker of Claude.
The ban could also be seen as a boost to Alibaba’s own alternative, recommending workers use the company’s own Qoder AI assistant instead.
Alibaba bans Claude Code for security reasons
The controversy arises from developers reverse engineering Claude Code, revealing that it contained code to identify Chinese users. Checks of the Chinese system’s time zones, proxy servers, AI lab infrastructure, and network characteristics were revealed.
Anthropic stated that this experimental feature was launched in March and was designed to combat unauthorized resellers, prevent account abuse, and protect its models from AI distillation.
However, the spyware was reported to have been hidden using obfuscation and steganography techniques, making them effectively invisible to users.
This isn’t the first time both companies have found themselves in a sticky situation: Anthropic recently accused Alibaba of carrying out the largest known model distillation attack against Claude (via PakGazette).
More broadly, Chinese companies have increasingly turned to domestic AI tools such as Qwen, DeepSeek, Moonshot and Ship amid rising geopolitical tensions.
While that trend has largely been reflected in the US, in favor of companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Cloud and xAI, US companies have reportedly been exploring cheaper Chinese alternatives in the name of cost efficiency.
Alibaba and Anthropic have not yet commented publicly on this matter.
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