Alibaba bans – Alibaba is set to bar its employees from using Anthropic’s Claude Code starting July 10, classifying the tool as high-risk and pushing staff toward its own Qoder software. The move follows Anthropic efforts to close access loopholes tied to Chinese users, incl
On July 10, Alibaba employees are expected to lose access to Anthropic’s programming tool Claude Code. Multiple reports say the company has decided to ban the software for its staff, after classifying Claude Code as high-risk.
The decision lands in the middle of a tightening standoff between model makers and the companies trying to use their tools across borders. Anthropic already prohibits Chinese companies—and foreign entities owned by those companies—from using its models. The company has reportedly been working to close loopholes that have allowed Chinese users to access Claude.
One part of that effort described by a recent Reddit post centers on a version of Claude Code that could secretly identify Chinese users. Anthropic’s Thariq Shihipar addressed the claim in a post on X. calling it “an experiment we launched in March that was meant to prevent account abuse from unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation.” He added that “the team has landed stronger mitigations since then and we’ve actually been meaning to take this down for a while.” Distillation. in this context. is the practice of training AI models using the outputs of other models.
Despite Anthropic’s assurances that the approach was meant to stop account abuse and protect against distillation—and that stronger mitigations were put in place—Alibaba is moving in the opposite direction: away from Claude Code and toward its own internal alternative. Reports say Alibaba is instructing employees to use Qoder instead.
For workers, it may feel like a simple change in tooling. For the companies behind the tools, it’s a message with wider stakes: access controls are not staying theoretical. As soon as Anthropic tightened its defenses around Claude Code. Alibaba responded by treating the tool as something employees shouldn’t touch—starting on July 10. with Qoder positioned as the replacement.
Alibaba Claude Code Anthropic Qoder software ban July 10 AI access controls distillation cybersecurity AI tools