AI Gatekeepers Lock Out Users as Investors Reprice Boom

Anthropic says Chinese AI labs used roughly 24,000 fake accounts to generate more than 16 million interactions with its Claude model in February. The company blocked the accounts and says Chinese labs DeepSeek, Moonshot and MiniMax used those interactions to mine Claude, a practice Anthropic calls distillation. These accounts weren’t just freeloaders: they represented between 5% and 7% of Anthropic’s revenue in the first nine months of the year.

Anthropic describes the practice as a loss of intellectual property with national security implications. Earlier this month, it introduced access restrictions, proxy blocking and bans on tens of thousands of accounts. Anthropic says the measures cut off 90% to 99% of the data being siphoned and effectively stopped Chinese developers from distilling its models. A private company can shut off access to its product. The financial consequences come alongside the security argument.

The gatekeepers and the growth race

Anthropic is approaching an IPO as investors question whether its month-to-month growth is slowing. Revenue reached $4.7 billion in the first quarter, $11.6 billion in the second and $16.8 billion in the third. The first-quarter figure had already exceeded the company’s total revenue for all of 2025. Some investors have discussed a valuation near $1.5 trillion, down from the roughly $2 trillion once expected.

Cheaper, open-source Chinese models remain a concern for investors. That competition sits beside the fight over who can use a model, on what terms, and who gets to decide. Anthropic’s restrictions protect its claimed intellectual property while also cutting off customers who paid to access Claude.

AI controls are spreading inside organizations, but the ability to supervise them remains limited. A Salt Security survey of more than 380 security and technology professionals found that 86% of their organizations had at least one AI agent operating, while 77% had agents chaining actions across other agents. Only 18% said they could automatically stop an agent behaving unexpectedly. Just 13% could trace a complete path from instruction to outcome across every agent involved.

The bill for the boom

Technology and broader equity markets fell as investors weighed AI spending, oil prices and inflation risks. A nearly 7% plunge in chipmakers sent the Nasdaq 100 to its worst day since June, while the S&P 500 fell 1.2%. Meta Platforms’ plans to increase capital spending revived concern that technology companies would issue more debt to finance AI infrastructure.

Investors want clearer evidence that the spending will pay off. James McCann of Edward Jones said they were questioning whether investment was sustainable amid higher rates. Meta fell 5.6% despite better-than-expected third-quarter revenue. Chief financial officer Susan Li said expanding the user base of its AI agent Muse would require significant investment, and she expected total serving costs to rise.

Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon, three of the largest data-center spenders, were due to report the following week. Blackstone President Jon Gray said investors needn’t fear an AI bubble, while billionaire Ken Griffin had said the industry was “almost certainly” headed in that direction. “With AI, you're building capacity, and you're hoping you can keep up with the demand,” Gray told Bloomberg Television.

Markets mark the cost

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang told CNBC demand for neoclouds was “off the charts,” but capital was scarce and impeding growth. Chinese stocks had entered a bear market and lost $2.4 trillion since a peak in May, amid a prolonged consumption slump and doubts about AI companies’ profitability.

In London, the FTSE 100 ended Thursday down 27.85 points, or 0.3%, at 10,725.03. Paris’s CAC 40 fell 1.4%, Frankfurt’s DAX 40 lost 1.1%, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.0%. Meta’s spending plans, a falling market and doubts about returns point to the same unresolved question: who carries the cost when companies build at this scale, and who can demand an account of what they’ve built?