Alibaba reportedly bans employees from using Claude Code

Alibaba will prohibit employees from using Anthropic’s Claude Code programming tool starting July 10, according to multiple reports, after the company classified the software as high-risk and directed staff to switch to its own Qoder tool. Anthropic already bars Chinese companies and foreign entities owned by those companies from accessing its models [1]. The San Francisco-based firm has been working to close loopholes that allowed users in China to reach Claude. Thariq Shihipar of Anthropic described one such effort as “an experiment we launched in March that was meant to prevent account abuse from unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation” [1]. Distillation refers to training AI models on the outputs of other models. “The team has landed stronger mitigations since then and we’ve actually been meaning to take this down for a while,” Shihipar added [1]. Alibaba’s internal directive pushes employees toward Qoder, the company’s own coding assistant [1]. The move arrives as Chinese technology firms face mounting constraints on access to Western AI platforms. Alibaba is a major backer of several domestic AI startups, including members of the so-called “Six AI Tigers” — Zhipu AI, Moonshot AI, MiniMax, Baichuan AI, 01.AI, and StepFun — a group of China-based companies that reached unicorn status by early 2024 and are positioned as domestic challengers to firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic [6]. Moonshot AI, headquartered in Beijing, focuses on large language models and has been called one of China’s “AI Tiger” companies by investors [2]. MiniMax, based in Shanghai, develops multimodal AI models and consumer applications and listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in January 2026 [5]. Anthropic’s restrictions on Chinese access reflect a broader pattern of technology controls between the United States and China. Indian government bans on Chinese apps in 2020, for instance, included apps owned by Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Sina, and Bytedance, illustrating how geopolitical tensions can rapidly reshape software availability [3]. Alibaba’s decision to block Claude Code internally aligns with both regulatory caution and the company’s investment in alternative tools developed within its own ecosystem.