Alibaba bans employees from using Anthropic’s Claude Code

Alibaba will prohibit employees from using Anthropic’s programming tool Claude Code beginning July 10, 2026, according to a report citing multiple sources. The company has classified Claude Code as high-risk software and instructed staff to use Alibaba’s internal Qoder tool instead.

Anthropic already prohibits Chinese companies, as well as foreign entities owned by those companies, from using its models, according to a company statement. The restriction is framed as an effort to prevent account abuse by unauthorized resellers and to protect against model distillation, where AI models are trained on the outputs of other models.

Anthropic’s Thariq Shihipar stated in a post on X that an experiment launched in March 2026 to identify Chinese users was intended to curb unauthorized access but has since been taken down following the implementation of stronger mitigations. Shihipar noted the company had planned to remove the experiment for some time.

The reported ban by Alibaba follows Anthropic’s ongoing efforts to restrict access to its tools among Chinese entities, reflecting broader tensions around cross-border AI tool availability and corporate software policies.