Alibaba bans Anthropic’s Claude Code after an alleged hidden China-detection backdoor is uncovered — employees told to switch to Qoder as the rift between the firms widens
Publish Date: 2026-07-05 08:20:00
Source Domain: www.tomshardware.com
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Alibaba Ban on Anthropic’s Claude Code: Chinese tech giant Alibaba has banned its employees from using Anthropic’s AI coding agent, Claude Code, starting July 10, following allegations of hidden code designed to detect Chinese users or those affiliated with Chinese labs.
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Security Concerns and High-Risk Software: The ban came after a comprehensive evaluation by Alibaba, which classified Claude Code as “high-risk software with security vulnerabilities” due to potential back-door risks.
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Mandated Use of Alibaba’s Qoder: Employees are required to adopt Qoder, Alibaba’s in-house AI coding platform, as a replacement for all Anthropic products, which extends to uninstalling other Anthropic tools such as Sonnet, Opus, and Fable.
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Rift Between Alibaba and Anthropic: This move underscores a deepening feud between Alibaba and Anthropic, rooted in accusations that Alibaba-linked entities attempted the largest model distillation attack on Anthropic’s model, alongside restrictive policies towards users from China.
