April 28 (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs has removed access to Anthropic’s AI models for its bankers in Hong Kong, a source with direct knowledge said.
Employees of the U.S. bank in the Chinese territory were previously able to interact with Anthropic’s Claude through an internal AI platform but in recent weeks they have no longer had access, according to the source.
The Financial Times first reported the removal of access to Claude on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Goldman’s move came as a result of the U.S. bank taking a strict interpretation of its contract with Anthropic following a consultation with the company, concluding that the bank’s employees in Hong Kong should not be able to use any Anthropic products, the report said.
Other mainstream models such as Gemini and ChatGPT were still available on the internal platform, the source told Reuters. They declined to be named because they were not authorised to speak to the media.
Goldman Sachs declined to comment. Anthropic did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
While AI models like ChatGPT and Claude, built by U.S. firms, are prohibited in mainland China, Hong Kong has mostly remained outside these controls, with usage limits set by U.S. companies themselves.
Anthropic’s spokesperson told the FT that its Claude models had never been officially “supported” in Hong Kong but declined to comment further.
The decision did not extend to contracts with other AI vendors such as OpenAI, the newspaper added.
The Hong Kong government and Hong Kong Monetary Authority did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Goldman Sachs’ Chief Information Officer Marco Argenti said in February that the bank was working with Anthropic to develop AI-powered agents aimed at automating a widening range of internal functions.
(Reporting by Fabiola Arámburo in Mexico City, Selena Li and Anne Marie Roantree in Hong Kong; Editing by Tasim Zahid, Stephen Coates and Kate Mayberry)
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