US accuses China's Moonshot of stealing from Anthropic's Fable for latest AI model
The Trump administration has leveled formal accusations against the Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI, claiming the company illicitly obtained proprietary technology from U.S.-based Anthropic. Michael Kratsios, a senior technology official, stated that Moonshot AI engaged in industrial distillation by using Anthropic’s advanced Fable model to train its own K3 release. This process involves using the outputs of a larger, expensive model to train a more cost-effective version, effectively bypassing significant research and development costs.
Beyond the allegations of intellectual property theft, officials report that Moonshot AI has bypassed export controls to acquire high-performance Nvidia GB300 chips. According to U.S. government findings, these chips were purportedly utilized in Thailand to advance the training of Chinese AI systems. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed that the administration is currently weighing trade blacklists and potential sanctions against the startup in response to these developments.
Anthropic has publicly signaled its concern, with public policy executive Sarah Heck emphasizing that the unauthorized use of U.S. models by foreign entities presents clear national security risks. This incident follows earlier reports from February where Anthropic identified millions of interactions linked to Chinese firms using fake accounts to access its services. The U.S. State Department has also issued diplomatic warnings regarding widespread efforts by Chinese companies to acquire protected AI research.
In response to these claims, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy dismissed the accusations as unfounded, characterizing the narrative as an attempt to discredit the progress of China’s technology sector. Moonshot AI released its K3 model shortly after the U.S. government restricted access to Anthropic's frontier models. As the race for high-parameter AI dominance intensifies, the intersection of national security, trade policy, and technical intellectual property remains a significant point of friction between Washington and Beijing.