Alibaba is banning employees from using Anthropic's Claude Code starting July 10, citing embedded backdoor risks in the AI coding assistant, according to people familiar with the matter. The Chinese e-commerce giant classified Claude Code as "high-risk software" after a Reddit post alleged that a version of the tool released in April contained code capable of identifying users accessing it from China. Alibaba has reportedly determined the tool may contain embedded backdoors that could expose internal systems.
The ban follows a far bigger clash between the two companies. In a letter to U.S. senators dated June 10 and seen by Reuters, Anthropic accused Alibaba of orchestrating the largest known model extraction attack against its Claude AI platform. The campaign, conducted between April 22 and June 5, generated more than 28.8 million exchanges with Claude through nearly 25,000 fraudulent accounts.
Anthropic's letter, sent to Senators Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren ahead of a Senate Banking Committee hearing on AI, described the operation as a "distillation" effort to illicitly extract Claude's capabilities. It compared the scale to other Chinese AI firms: DeepSeek's operation involved over 150,000 exchanges, Moonshot AI exceeded 3.4 million, and MiniMax surpassed 13 million.
Thariq Shihipar, who works on Claude Code, responded on X this week that the controversial code was part of an experiment launched in March "meant to prevent account abuse from unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation."
Alibaba is not the first major firm to restrict Claude access. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs limited employee access to Anthropic's models in Hong Kong in June, citing licensing terms that excluded use across Greater China. The Financial Times reported that JPMorgan removed Claude from its approved list of large language models for Hong Kong staff.
Shares of Alibaba listed in Hong Kong fell 0.7% on the news, underperforming the Hang Seng Index, which gained 1.3% during the session. Alibaba has not publicly commented on the ban or the extraction allegations.
