Anthropic stops selling AI tools to Chinese firms: Here's why
What's the story
Anthropic, a leading American artificial intelligence (AI) company and the parent of Claude AI, has announced a major policy shift. The company will no longer sell its AI tools to Chinese-owned companies and groups. The decision comes as part of efforts to limit China's use of its technology for military advancements.
Policy impact
Policy extends to other US adversaries
An executive from Anthropic told the Financial Times that the company is "taking action to close a loophole that allows Chinese companies to access frontier AI." The new policy will also apply to other US adversaries such as Russia, Iran, and North Korea. This means several Chinese tech giants including ByteDance, Tencent, and Alibaba will be affected by this policy change.
Financial implications
Impact on revenue in low hundreds of millions
The policy change will affect both direct customers and those using Anthropic's services through cloud platforms. The executive estimated that the impact on Anthropic's global revenue would be in the "low hundreds of millions of dollars." Despite the potential loss of business to competitors, Anthropic believes this move is necessary to highlight a "significant problem."
Rising tensions
US concerns over China's AI advancements
The US is increasingly worried about China's growth in artificial intelligence technology and its application in the military. Earlier this year, Chinese start-up DeepSeek made headlines with its open-source R1 model, which was said to be on par with leading American models. OpenAI later accused DeepSeek of illegally using its models to train R1.