Alibaba to ban Claude Code in workplaces over alleged security risks
The decision will take place on July 10.
A man walks past the Alibaba logo in Beijing. Photo by REUTERS/Florence Lo
- Alibaba has banned employees from using Anthropic’s Claude Code over security and data concerns. The move shifts staff to Alibaba’s own coding tool, Qoder.
- The decision follows reports the tool may inspect user environments and flag China-linked users. This raises concerns about privacy and AI monitoring practices.
- Anthropic has accused Alibaba of improperly extracting Claude model capabilities. This highlights escalating competition and legal tension between major AI firms.
- The dispute reflects growing US–China AI rivalry, affecting software access, data control, and global tech trust.
Chinese tech giant Alibaba has banned employees from using Anthropic's Claude Code at work after the tool drew scrutiny for code that can help identify China-linked users, according to a person familiar with the order.
Claude Code is Anthropic's AI coding assistant for software developers. It has become popular among programmers in China despite Anthropic's restrictions on access by users and entities in China.
The person said that Alibaba employees were being told to use the company's own coding platform Qoder.
Alibaba and Anthropic did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Anthropic last month accused Alibaba of illicitly extracting its Claude AI model capabilities in what it said was the largest known attack of its kind on the company, according to a letter seen by Reuters.
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The distillation helps accelerate China's ability to reach Anthropic's advanced Mythos Preview capabilities, it said in the letter.
The ban comes just days after developers said Claude Code contained mechanisms that inspected user environments, including timezone and proxy-related information, and inserted subtle markers into prompts sent to Anthropic's servers.
An Anthropic employee wrote on Tuesday on X that the feature was "an experiment we launched in March" intended to prevent account abuse by unauthorized resellers and protect against model distillation.
Alibaba's ban was earlier reported by Chinese media outlets.