Anthropic’s ID Verification Imperils Chinese Founders

Anthropic has quietly flourished in China thanks to businesses—including big tech firms and startups—circumventing Anthropic’s official restrictions on usage. That may soon change.

Anthropic last week started requiring some customers to provide a government-issued photo ID and an image of themselves taken from their phone or webcam. It’s the latest in a series of steps taken by Anthropic over the past year to prevent people in countries viewed as American adversaries, such as China, Russia and North Korea, from accessing its cutting-edge AI.

A co-founder of a Beijing-based AI application startup says his access to Anthropic’s Claude Code suddenly shut down last week after Anthropic announced the new ID policy. While he doesn’t know if the shutdown is directly related to the new rule, he started using OpenAI’s Codex AI coding service over the weekend as a substitute. (OpenAI has the same prohibition on customers located in U.S. adversary countries but doesn’t require ID verification.)