Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA, Financials) has reportedly banned employees from using Anthropic's Claude Code at work, adding another layer to the growing AI fight between U.S. and Chinese technology companies.
Claude Code is Anthropic's coding assistant for software developers. It has been popular with programmers in China, even though Anthropic restricts access for users and companies in the country.
According to Reuters, Alibaba employees were told to use Qoder, the company's own coding platform, instead.
The ban comes after Anthropic accused Alibaba of trying to extract capabilities from its Claude model through a process known as distillation. Alibaba has not publicly responded to the accusation.
The issue became more sensitive after developers said Claude Code included features that checked user environments, including timezone and proxy information. Anthropic said the feature was meant to stop account abuse and protect its models.
For investors, the story shows how quickly AI is becoming a compliance and national technology issue. Alibaba's move may help it reduce outside dependency while pushing more employees toward its own AI tools.