--- title: "\"No Zuo No Die\": Silicon Valley Turns Against Anthropic, Claude Products Ordered to Be Banned" type: "News" locale: "en" url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/294363004.md" description: "Anthropic has triggered a boycott in Silicon Valley due to the launch of its competing product, Claude Design, and tighter data policies, exacerbating a crisis of trust among partners. Reddit exposures reveal that some companies have received government directives requiring them to discontinue Anthropic's services by August 2026. Multiple controversies have led to customer churn, putting pressure on its planned IPO this fall" datetime: "2026-07-30T12:09:13.000Z" locales: - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/294363004.md) - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/294363004.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/294363004.md) --- # "No Zuo No Die": Silicon Valley Turns Against Anthropic, Claude Products Ordered to Be Banned Anthropic is paying the price for a series of controversial decisions. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal earlier this week, **Silicon Valley is brewing a wave of boycotts against the AI company, targeting its product strategy that competes with partners, tightened data retention policies, and its stance against open-source AI models.** Meanwhile, an exposure post on the ClaudeAI community on Reddit revealed that **some companies have received directives from the U.S. government, mandating the complete discontinuation of all products and services under Anthropic by August 31, 2026.** The trigger for this backlash was the launch of **Claude Design** in April this year—a product widely regarded by the industry as a direct challenge to design software company Figma, which happens to be an Anthropic partner. Subsequently, the Fable 5 model released by Anthropic in June sparked strong criticism from the research community again for quietly restricting answers to AI research-related questions without prior notice to users. The accumulation of multiple controversies has led startup founders, software executives, and AI researchers to turn to cheaper alternative models, with some companies even explicitly avoiding cooperation with Anthropic. For investors, these developments are particularly noteworthy. Anthropic is planning an IPO as early as this fall, and the decline in partner trust, loss of corporate customers, and potential government-level restrictions could exert substantial pressure on its commercialization process. ## Competitor Launch Ignites Partner Trust Crisis According to The Wall Street Journal, the rift in Anthropic's partnerships began with the launch of Claude Design in April this year. Several startup founders and software executives stated that this product was seen as direct competition to Figma's business, and Figma had previously been an Anthropic partner. At an industry event held shortly after the launch, Figma CEO Dylan Field publicly stated that Anthropic lacked "consistent transparency" in its communications. Sarah Sachs, AI Lead at Notion, who attended the event, said, "The entire industry has learned many lessons from the evolution of this matter. Some companies may have been too trusting." This incident triggered a chain reaction in the Silicon Valley startup circle. Many founders concluded that Anthropic could launch competing tools and snatch customers at any time. They subsequently began seriously shifting towards cheaper open-source models, especially those not produced by leading U.S. labs. ## Fable 5 Controversy: Double Blow of Invisible Restrictions and Data Retention In June this year, Anthropic released the Fable 5 model, sparking another strong backlash. According to The Wall Street Journal, during the initial launch period, the model quietly reduced the quality of responses to certain AI development-related questions without notifying users. The research community strongly criticized this, arguing that such "invisible guardrails" were anti-competitive and hindered objective assessment of the model's capabilities. Anthropic subsequently apologized and made the relevant restrictions public, but still insisted on refusing to respond to flagged requests. A company spokesperson stated that this measure aimed to prevent foreign adversaries from using the model to create "serious security risks." Fable 5 also eliminated the "zero data retention" option, changing it to retain user data for 30 days, citing trust and safety needs. This change unsettled many corporate customers, especially in industries involving sensitive data. Some companies also worried that their data might be used to train new models, thereby helping Anthropic develop more competitive products. In response, an Anthropic spokesperson stated that company employees cannot read the retained conversation content and promised not to use such data for model training. The above restrictions apply only to Fable and Mythos, the two "most capable models." ## Open-Source Debate: Anthropic Becomes Isolated On another front, Anthropic has become isolated due to its hardline stance on open-source AI models. According to The Wall Street Journal, more than 70 Silicon Valley companies, including NVIDIA and Microsoft, signed an open letter expressing support for open-source models. OpenAI and Alphabet, Google's parent company, subsequently signed as well, leaving Anthropic as one of the few major AI companies that did not endorse it. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an open letter on Monday attempting to clarify the company's position, stating that the company "has never advocated for banning open-source models" and that "open-source models without dangerous capabilities are public goods." His core concern is the risk of authoritarian governments leveraging AI to gain military advantages or deeply suppress their populations, and he called on policymakers to crack down on "industrial-scale distillation"—the practice of training competitive products by querying frontier models with massive amounts of data. However, critics were not convinced. Kevin Bryan, Associate Professor of Innovation Economics at the University of Toronto, defended Anthropic, arguing that the security risks of open-source frontier models are real. But other critics pointed out that Anthropic's own model training process is identical to the "distillation" behavior it criticizes. Mark Suman, Co-founder and CEO of Maple, an AI productivity tool startup, said, "They distilled the entire internet without paying copyright fees, and now they turn around and tell others they can't do it. I find that very strange." Vishal Misra, Vice Dean for Computing and AI at Columbia University's School of Engineering, stated that while Anthropic's products are excellent, its statements regarding security risks do not hold up to scrutiny. "They are creating fear of these models among the public, and this fear gives them leverage to push for regulations that benefit themselves." ## Government Directive Forces Ban, Corporate Customers Accelerate Exit According to an exposure post in the ClaudeAI section of the Reddit community, some companies have received directives from the U.S. government mandating the complete discontinuation of all products and services under Anthropic. The document shows that the ban covers a wide range, including the Claude web and desktop applications, Claude Code and command-line tools, the Anthropic console and API interfaces, as well as all Anthropic models accessed through IDEs, cloud platforms, shared applications, or hosting services, with an internal transition deadline of August 31, 2026. The document requires employees to immediately stop creating any new Anthropic accounts, subscriptions, API keys, integrations, or deployments, and to migrate existing workflows to approved alternatives. Engineering teams are directed to migrate Claude Code to Codex, which is based on GPT models, and to remove Anthropic models from IDEs such as Cursor. The document explicitly warns that "non-compliance will severely impact the company's ability to fulfill existing contracts and win new business." ## IPO Prospects Clouded, Commercial Pressure Surges The aforementioned turmoil has directly impacted Anthropic's commercial prospects. Anthropic plans to start its IPO as early as this fall, and damaged partner trust, corporate customers turning to competitors, and potential government-level restrictions could all compress its market share and revenue growth space. Critics point out that Anthropic's resistance to open-source models aligns closely with its upcoming commercial interests for the IPO—the popularity of open-source models will directly impact the pricing power of its paid products. Some tech figures and policymakers are also concerned that the AI market is moving towards a duopoly of Anthropic and OpenAI, further compressing the space for innovation. Last Saturday, a small demonstration supporting open-source AI was held in downtown San Francisco, co-hosted by the CEO of Hugging Face, with participants chanting, "Frontier labs are monopolizing intelligence." An Anthropic spokesperson maintained that the measures taken by the company are necessary to ensure model safety and prevent adversaries from using them to create serious risks. However, in Silicon Valley, this statement is increasingly being interpreted as commercial protectionism rather than technological idealism. Risk Warning and Disclaimer The market carries risks; investment requires caution. This article does not constitute personal investment advice, nor does it take into account the specific investment objectives, financial status, or needs of individual users. Users should consider whether any opinions, views, or conclusions in this article align with their specific circumstances. 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