Anthropic accuses Chinese AI labs of mining Claude as US debates AI chip exports | TechCrunch
TechCrunch
by Rebecca BellanFebruary 23, 2026
AI-Generated Deep Dive Summary
Anthropic has accused three Chinese AI companies—DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax—of using over 24,000 fake accounts to interact with its Claude AI model. The goal of these interactions, totaling more than 16 million exchanges, was reportedly to improve their own models by exploiting a technique called "distillation." Anthropic claims the labs targeted Claude's unique capabilities, including agentic reasoning, tool use, and coding, which are key strengths of the model.
The accusations come amid ongoing debates in the U.S. about enforcing stricter export controls on advanced AI chips, aimed at curbing China's AI development. While distillation is a common training method for creating smaller, more efficient models, it can also
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Originally published on TechCrunch on 2/23/2026