Anthropic said it will prohibit Chinese-owned companies and organizations from using its artificial intelligence services, extending existing restrictions on what it calls “authoritarian regions.” According to Yahoo Finance/AFP, the US startup framed the move as an update to its terms of service aimed at closing loopholes used to access its products via overseas subsidiaries.
Updated terms target ownership and jurisdiction
The company said firms based in China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran are already unable to access its commercial services due to legal and security concerns. In its Friday statement, Anthropic added that some groups “continue accessing our services in various ways, such as through subsidiaries incorporated in other countries.”
To address that, the update “prohibits companies or organizations whose ownership structures subject them to control from jurisdictions where our products are not permitted, like China, regardless of where they operate.” Anthropic said the change would apply to entities more than 50 percent owned, directly or indirectly, by companies in unsupported regions.
Industry reaction and commercial impact
Nicholas Cook, a lawyer focused on the AI industry with 15 years of experience at international law firms in China, told AFP that “this is the first time a major US AI company has imposed a formal, public prohibition of this kind.” He said the immediate commercial effect may be modest but suggested the stance could prompt questions about whether others will take a similar approach.
Context: market access, funding, and competitors
Anthropic, known for its Claude chatbot and positioning on AI safety and responsible development, is heavily backed by Amazon. The San Francisco–headquartered company was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI executives.
An Anthropic executive told the Financial Times the decision would affect revenues in the “low hundreds of millions of dollars,” according to Yahoo Finance/AFP. The company announced this week it raised $13 billion in its latest funding round and said it now has more than 300,000 business customers. Anthropic added that the number of accounts on pace to generate more than $100,000 annually is nearly seven times larger than a year ago.
ChatGPT and other products from OpenAI are unavailable within China, which has spurred growth of domestic AI models from companies such as Alibaba and Baidu. Some users in China access US generative AI chatbots through VPN services. Assumptions about US dominance were challenged this year when Chinese start-up DeepSeek unveiled a chatbot that matched top American systems for an apparent fraction of the cost, Yahoo Finance/AFP reported.
