Anthropic has alleged Alibaba found a cheaper way to close the already narrowing AI gap: Not by stealing servers or smuggling chips, but by using fake accounts and innocuous interactions with Claude to extract its capabilities and train competing systems at a fraction of the cost.
Leading IPO expert Jay Ritter told Fortune that Alibaba’s distillation could either strengthen Anthropic’s IPO story by positioning the company as strategic in the U.S-China rivalry or lead investors to question Anthropic’s future profitability if its frontier AI moat isn’t defensible.
