Alibaba Reportedly Bans Anthropic Products and Orders Claude Uninstalled

Tensions between Alibaba and U.S. artificial intelligence company Anthropic stem from the latter's allegations that Chinese companies may be extracting model capabilities through data distillation, as well as controversy over markers found in Claude Code's system prompts. Because the dispute involves corporate code, internal data and supply-chain security, it has been interpreted as a further escalation of U.S.-China AI competition into the realm of national security.

The latest reports say Alibaba has instructed employees to stop using and uninstall Anthropic products, including Claude and Claude Code, by July 10, citing the need to guard against potential backdoors and data leaks. The company is also promoting its internally developed coding tool Qoder. The reports disclosed no procurement costs or losses, while neither Alibaba nor Anthropic has yet provided a full public explanation.