Goldman Sachs Restricts Hong Kong Staff’s Access to Anthropic AI

Goldman Sachs is banning access to Anthropic’s Claude for bankers in Hong Kong, according to a source cited by the Financial Times. 

In the Tuesday report, the FT claimed that one person familiar with the move said Goldman acted after adopting a strict interpretation of its agreement with Anthropic following discussions with the Silicon Valley company, a decision that has left employees in Hong Kong unable to access Claude models for weeks, either directly or through the firm’s internal AI platforms. 

According to the FT, Goldman’s move is specific to Anthropic and does not affect contracts with other AI vendors such as OpenAI. 

While AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude are banned in mainland China through what it calls the Great Firewall, Hong Kong has remained more open, with usage restrictions generally determined by the AI companies rather than Chinese regulators. 

This is because American AI companies are increasingly cautious about activity in China, in part because of concerns over “distillation,” where local developers could use foreign models at scale to train new competing tools, which can be seen in recent public accusations.