Anthropic tightens Claude access controls over China restrictions

Traders Union
All News
Financial News
Anthropic tightens Claude access

Highlights

Anthropic has tightened access controls after companies like Ant Financial used Singapore subsidiaries and workarounds to provide Claude accounts to Chinese employees.
Although these workarounds do not violate U.S. or Chinese law, they breach Anthropic's terms banning use by Chinese companies and their controlled foreign entities.
Anthropic's stricter verification and payment blocking measures highlight growing industry efforts to enforce China-related bans, increasing compliance burdens for cross-border AI users.

Loopholes used through overseas entities

As first reported by the Financial Times, Chinese companies including Ant Financial have accessed Anthropic tools such as Claude Code through workarounds involving cloud providers and overseas subsidiaries, according to people familiar with the matter.

The people said Ant gave employees corporate Claude accounts that were accessed through the company's intranet, which is connected to its Singapore-based entity. ByteDance does not directly facilitate access to Claude, but it this year introduced a reimbursement scheme that lets engineers expense personal subscriptions to the platform, according to five employees of the TikTok owner. Those engineers use VPNs to access the subscriptions.

These arrangements do not violate U.S. or Chinese law, but they breach Anthropic's terms of service. The company says Chinese companies and foreign entities they own are banned from using its models.

Stricter enforcement across the AI sector

Anthropic has one of the toughest China-related usage bans among U.S. AI companies, requiring user verification and blocking payments from Chinese banks. Its latest move suggests enforcement is becoming a more important business issue as providers seek tighter control over where their models are deployed.

The issue also underlines the commercial tension facing AI companies as Chinese groups continue to look for ways to obtain leading foreign models for coding and engineering work. For the sector, stronger compliance measures could raise operating friction for cross-border users while sharpening the divide between U.S. providers and Chinese demand.

Our earlier coverage focused on Anthropic’s response to speculation that the U.S. government could take an equity stake in the company. We noted that Anthropic said it has held no such talks, as Washington debates how to oversee powerful AI systems and whether the public should share in the value created by top AI developers.

This material may contain third-party opinions, none of the data and information on this webpage constitutes investment advice according to our Disclaimer. While we adhere to strict Editorial Integrity, this post may contain references to products from our partners.