Anthropic Accuses Chinese Rivals of “Industrial-Scale” AI Theft Amid $30 Billion Funding Surge and Musk Backlash

The accusations have triggered a fierce response from Elon Musk, CEO of xAI, who lashed out at Anthropic on his social media platform, X.

RMN Digital Corporate Desk
New Delhi | February 24, 2026

Anthropic, the AI startup behind the Claude chatbot, has accused three Chinese tech companies of using tens of thousands of fraudulent accounts to illicitly “distill” its capabilities into their own models. This high-stakes allegation comes at a pivotal moment for the company, which recently secured a massive $30 billion funding round but now faces a scathing public attack from Elon Musk over its own data practices.

The “Distillation” Allegations

Anthropic identified the firms DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax as the entities behind what it described as “industrial-scale distillation attacks”. According to the company, these labs created more than 24,000 fake accounts to generate over 16 million interactions with Claude.

The goal of these interactions was “distillation”—a technique where a smaller, less capable model is trained on the outputs of a more powerful one. While distillation can be used legitimately to create cheaper models for customers, Anthropic warned that foreign labs could use it to bypass safety protocols. The company expressed concern that these “illicitly distilled” capabilities could be fed into foreign military, intelligence, and surveillance systems. Anthropic emphasized that the “window to act is narrow” as these campaigns grow in sophistication.

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Musk and Netizens Strike Back

The accusations have triggered a fierce response from Elon Musk, CEO of xAI, who lashed out at Anthropic on his social media platform, X. Musk accused the startup of hypocrisy, claiming Anthropic is “guilty of stealing training data at massive scale” and alleging the company has paid multi-billion dollar settlements for data theft. He specifically referenced a $1.5 billion settlement regarding the creation of Claude AI to support his claims.

The tech community also voiced criticism, with some netizens calling Anthropic’s stance “deeply ironic”. Critics argued that because Anthropic trained Claude on the open internet—often using copyrighted data without explicit permission—it is contradictory for the company to complain when others use its public API to learn from its outputs.

Growth Despite Controversy

Despite the legal and public relations friction, Anthropic continues to see explosive growth. The company recently announced it raised $30 billion in Series G funding, a massive investment that has pushed its post-money valuation to $380 billion.

This financial milestone follows the launch of Opus 4.6, Anthropic’s latest model designed to automate entire categories of professional work. The new model is capable of generating complex professional documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, signaling Anthropic’s intent to dominate the market for real-world business applications.