Chinese Regulator Probes DeepSeek, Moonshot over Claude Data Routing Claims

China's Cyberspace Administration is investigating DeepSeek and Moonshot AI over allegations that they routed user prompts and data to Anthropic's Claude, according to The Information. The probe has reportedly led to executives at several Chinese AI labs being questioned, with a focus on DeepSeek, the lab behind the open-source DeepSeek model that caused a stir in 2025, and Moonshot AI, maker of the Kimi model.

Anthropic, earlier in September, named both companies in a 154-page report titled "Detecting and countering misuse of AI," accusing them of feeding conversations between their own models and users into Claude and using its responses to improve their own models through a process known as distillation. Anthropic said it found more than 23 million user inputs from Moonshot between May and July, and 12.1 million from DeepSeek during a 14-day period in July. It added that the prompts contained sensitive information including names, email addresses and company data from individuals, multinational companies and state-affiliated actors, spanning at least a dozen languages, which could violate privacy laws and the labs' own terms of service.

U.S. labs have repeatedly accused Chinese rivals of distillation "attacks." The investigation comes as the Trump administration prepares to host Chinese President Xi Jinping, with AI expected to be a major topic of discussion.