Anthropic accuses Alibaba of orchestrating the largest Claude distillation to date

Anthropic alleges Alibaba's Qwen lab ran the largest distillation campaign against Claude, using about 25,000 fake accounts to execute nearly 29 million exchanges with Claude from April to June, targeting software engineering and agentic reasoning. It marks the first time a major Chinese firm has been named in such activity, following earlier campaigns by smaller startups. Distillation is viewed by US officials as a national-security concern, prompting calls for sanctions and export-control measures; Alibaba did not comment, and the company faces ongoing regulatory pressure in Washington alongside other disputes.