Anthropic Accuses DeepSeek, Other China-Based AI Firms of Free-Riding

The company also expressed concerns about the recent U.S. approval of H200 chip exports to China—Nvidia’s second-most advanced chip.

The DeepSeek app on an iPhone screen in San Anselmo, Calif., on Jan. 27, 2025. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Anthropic, the maker of the Claude chatbot, accused three of China’s leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies of creating more than 24,000 fraudulent accounts to tap into its system and train their own models.

The three companies—DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax—allegedly used those accounts to send more than 16 million prompts to Claude, siphoning off output to refine their own products, Anthropic said in a Feb. 23 blog post.