From January to September 2026, the artificial intelligence laboratory Anthropic could have earned between $1.66 billion and $2.33 billion from users who were later found to have violated the rules for using AI models and the Claude chatbot. Such users provided the company with 5% to 7% of revenue, according to the documents submitted to it for entering the stock exchange.
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It takes time to identify violations, conduct investigations and take action, Anthropic notes, so until access is limited or blocked, revenue from such users is reflected in overall financial indicators. The company did not disclose what exactly the violations were and what countries these users were from. Anthropic stepped up enforcement in August and September; in October, Russians began to be massively disconnected from Claude – the final argument was a Russian passport. The company warned that the measures could impact its revenue and growth, but did not provide an estimate of that impact.
The gray market for access to foreign AI services is estimated at 100–150 million rubles; The turnover of legal aggregators is estimated at 700 million rubles, according to GPTunneL, which provides such services. There is a well-functioning market for the resale of access to Anthropic Claude: accounts are combined on servers outside of China, through which user requests are processed. One of the sellers in Shanghai issues subscriptions for $200 per month and pays for them with the USDT stablecoin. Sometimes such cards are blocked en masse overnight; individual customers are willing to pay $10 million per month for subscriptions.
According to one version, Anthropic maintains a hidden user rating. It takes into account factors such as IP address, device changes and the intensity of requests. When the rating drops below a certain level, the system sets a hidden block, after which a requirement is made to present documents. With lockdowns comes the demand for gateways; access may be lost suddenly, and the user cannot check the data route. The blocking is in the nature of an “exemplary flogging,” experts point out—at the same time, the company does not intend to completely cut off access to users from Russia and China, because they continue to pay.
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