Anthropic has begun tightening controls aimed at blocking access to its Claude artificial intelligence services by entities linked to China, after internal checks uncovered a range of bypass methods used by some companies, according to people familiar with the matter.
Sources who spoke with reporters said several firms have been able to reach Claude through routes that skirt Anthropic's restrictions. That access has included the use of overseas subsidiaries, third-party cloud providers and other technical workarounds.
Two specific examples cited are Ant Financial and ByteDance. In the case of Ant Financial, employees were given corporate Claude accounts that were registered under a Singapore-based entity. ByteDance reportedly reimbursed individual engineers for personal Claude subscriptions that were accessed while connected to virtual private networks, or VPNs.
The practices identified do not appear to violate either U.S. or Chinese law, the sources said, but they are in breach of Anthropic's terms of service. Those terms specifically bar Chinese companies and foreign entities under their control from using Anthropic's models.
In response, Anthropic has intensified technical measures to detect and disable such access. Measures described include monitoring account activity for telltale indicators - for example, analysing users' computer time zones - and taking aim at so-called "transfer station" services that relay requests through overseas Claude accounts.
The reporting also notes that some companies access Claude by routing traffic through foreign subsidiaries that run on cloud infrastructure. Microsoft Azure was given as an example of the cloud platform used to facilitate such access.
Anthropic's actions centre on identifying patterns in account behaviour and cutting off intermediary channels that allow requests to be proxied through accounts based outside China. The company appears to be pursuing a mix of account surveillance and targeted takedowns to uphold its contractual restrictions.
What this covers
- Which companies were named: Ant Financial and ByteDance were cited as having used overseas corporate accounts and VPN-enabled personal subscriptions respectively.
- Methods of access: overseas subsidiaries, cloud providers and transfer services relaying requests through foreign Claude accounts.
- Enforcement approach: anthropic is monitoring account signals such as time zone data and targeting intermediary services that reroute requests.