- Alibaba Bans Access to Claude Code, Asks Employees to Use Internal Qoder Instead
- Anthropic was tracking markers to show which users were in China
- Anthropic accuses Alibaba of participating in a major effort to distill the Claude model
Alibaba has reportedly banned its employees from using Claude Code internally starting July 10, 2026, classifying it as a high-risk tool endangering the organization’s security.
The move follows similar trends already seen at US tech giants banning internal use of Chinese tools, but Alibaba cited genuine concerns that were acknowledged by Claude Anthropic’s creator.
The ban could also be seen as a push for Alibaba’s own alternative, with workers asked to use the company’s Qoder AI assistant instead.
Alibaba bans Claude Code over security concerns
The controversy stems from the fact that the developers reverse-engineered Claude Code, revealing that it contained code to identify Chinese users. Audits of the Chinese system’s time zones, proxy servers, AI lab infrastructure, and network characteristics have all been revealed.
Anthropic said the experimental feature launched in March and was designed to combat unauthorized resellers, prevent account abuse and protect its models from AI distillation.
However, the spyware was allegedly hidden using obfuscation and steganography techniques, effectively making it invisible to users.
This isn’t the first time the two companies have found themselves in a sticky situation — Anthropic recently accused Alibaba of carrying out the largest known distillation attack against Claude (via PK Press Club).
More generally, Chinese companies are increasingly referencing domestic AI tools like Qwen, DeepSeek, Moonshot and Ship amid growing geopolitical tensions.
Although this trend is largely reflected in the United States, favoring OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Cloud and xAI, American companies have reportedly explored cheaper Chinese alternatives in the name of profitability.
Alibaba and Anthropic have not yet publicly commented on this matter.
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