Goldman Sachs Hong Kong employees are banned from using Claude: even business trips to Hong Kong are not allowed, and Anthropic says they have never officially supported Hong Kong

Caijinghe.net reported that employees at the Hong Kong offices of Goldman Sachs have been unable to use Anthropic’s Claude model via the firm’s internal AI platform since a few weeks ago, with access restricted based on geographic location. Employees who are traveling on business from overseas to Hong Kong are also unable to access the model during their time there. Those primarily affected are software engineers who use Claude for code writing and financial modeling.

Goldman Sachs conducted a strict interpretation of the contractual terms with Anthropic and, after negotiations with Anthropic, concluded that its employees in Hong Kong should not use the company’s products. An Anthropic spokesperson told the Financial Times that Claude has never been officially supported in Hong Kong. The restriction does not involve other AI providers such as OpenAI; Goldman Sachs employees can still use ChatGPT and Gemini.

The core concern behind U.S. AI companies limiting Claude’s availability in Hong Kong is that local institutions could train their own models by using outputs generated by foreign models. Hong Kong is a global hub for investment banking and cross-border transactions in Greater China. If employees cannot access the strongest models, they may fall behind other teams.