Anthropic accuses three Chinese companies of “distilling” their AI models

Chinese companies accused of “distilling” Claude models

*OpenAI warned lawmakers this month about how Chinese startup DeepSeek uses distillation to accelerate its own AI model development. Now two more competitors—MiniMax Group and Moonshot—have joined the list of suspects.*

What Anthropic representatives say
According to Bloomberg, Anthropic accuses three Chinese firms of violating the terms for using their Claude family models. The company estimates:

- Over 16 million data exchange sessions between these companies and Claude models.

- Interaction was carried out through thousands of fake accounts and proxy servers, minimizing detection risk.

Anthropic emphasizes that distillation allows developers to quickly “crack” trained models: they use data from other systems to accelerate their own progress.

Why it matters
- Accelerated competition. Chinese firms actively deploy more affordable AI models for text, video, and image work, bypassing costly Western solutions.

- Monetization risk. Companies relying on closed ecosystems face challenges protecting their intellectual assets.

Anthropic notes that Chinese developers’ tactics are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and the “window for counteraction” is shrinking. The threat extends beyond a single company or region.

Examples of violations
Company Number of exchanges
DeepSeek ~150 000
MiniMax >13 million

*DeepSeek introduced model R1 a year ago, which at comparable performance was many times cheaper than Western competitors. Since then the Chinese market has been saturated with affordable AI solutions.*

How Anthropic responds
- New defenses against distillation.

- Willingness to share them with partners and the industry as a whole: “No single company can tackle this alone. Sustainable protection requires joint efforts from AI companies, cloud providers, and regulators.”

Thus, Anthropic raises the issue of coordinated measures to protect intellectual property in the rapidly evolving AI industry.