Alibaba reportedly bans employees from using Claude Code

<p id="speakable-summary" class="wp-block-paragraph">China’s Alibaba will ban employees from using Anthropic’s programming tool Claude Code, starting on July 10, according to <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/alibaba-ban-claude-code-workplace-over-alleged-backdoor-risks-source-says-2026-07-03/">multiple</a>
<a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/202607032148/alibaba-set-to-ban-staff-from-using-claude-over-security-fears">reports</a>. </p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Anthropic already prohibits Chinese companies, as well as foreign entities owned by those companies, from using its models. The company has reportedly been <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.ft.com/content/ad033063-60f9-4c0c-8d8a-9193a83e6f60">working to close loopholes</a> that allow Chinese users to access Claude.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">According to <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1ujila1/anthropic_embedded_spyware_in_claude_code_and/?solution=d4edbe076e50661cd4edbe076e50661c&amp;js_challenge=1&amp;token=7afd7253fec22262ff1c52b1703fe9ecfa243d1261b7ed21d12c5103149b3258&amp;jsc_orig_r=">a recent Reddit post</a>, some of that loophole-closing involved a version of Claude Code that could secretly identify Chinese users. Anthropic’s Thariq Shihipar <a rel="nofollow" href="https://x.com/trq212/status/2072079729331777817">said in a post on X</a> that this was “an experiment we launched in March that was meant to prevent account abuse from unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation.” (<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/03/artificial-intelligence-definition-glossary-hallucinations-guide-to-common-ai-terms/">Distillation</a> is a practice where AI models are trained on the outputs of other models.)</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">“The team has landed stronger mitigations since then and we’ve actually been meaning to take this down for a while,” Shihipar said.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Nonetheless, Alibaba has reportedly classified Claude Code as high-risk software and is instructing employees to use the company’s own Qoder tool instead.</p>