JPMorgan blocks employee access to Anthropic's Claude AI model in Hong Kong due to restrictions in the company's licensing terms.

What happened: JPMorgan Chase has restricted staff in Hong Kong from selecting Claude from an internal menu of approved large language models. The move was driven by language in Anthropic's usage terms within its licensing arrangement with JPMorgan. Goldman Sachs had applied a similar restriction earlier this year, citing Anthropic's terms that bar usage in Greater China, including Hong Kong.

Why it matters: The loss of access to leading AI models could complicate Hong Kong's efforts to reinforce its role as an international financial centre, as these tools are being adopted quickly elsewhere, especially for coding tasks. Unlike mainland China, where Western AI tools are blocked under the Great Firewall, Hong Kong has operated largely without the same censorship regime — but now limits are coming directly from US AI providers themselves.

What to watch: US AI companies remain cautious about their systems being used in China, in part because of the risk of 'distillation', a process in which domestic groups could develop new models through extensive use of foreign systems. Anthropic previously told the Financial Times its Claude models had never been officially 'supported' in Hong Kong.