Chinese AI rivals clash after Anthropic pulls Claude from OpenClaw, as token crunch bites

What happened

Anthropic’s decision to bar its Claude models from the open-source agent tool OpenClaw has set off a public spat among Chinese AI firms racing to capture users displaced by the move. Anthropic said the change was needed to “prioritise existing customers.” In response, Shanghai-based MiniMax (迷你玛克斯) and smartphone giant Xiaomi (小米) quickly urged users to migrate to their own, cheaper token subscription plans — effectively positioning themselves as low-cost alternatives to premium US services such as Anthropic and OpenAI.

Why it matters

AI “tokens” — the units of model usage that drive costs and compute demand — have surged with the rise of agent-style applications. That surge is straining global compute capacity. Who can supply cheap tokens at scale? That is now the central commercial question. It has been reported that the demand spike exposes longer-term limits in data‑centre capacity and specialist accelerator supply, problems made worse by export controls and trade restrictions on advanced AI chips that factor into US‑China tech tensions.

The Chinese angle

Chinese firms are using the episode to sharpen domestic offerings and to highlight the limits of dependence on Western stacks. MiniMax accused Anthropic on X of stifling community innovation by tying subscriptions to first‑party products. Xiaomi framed its token plans as a pragmatic, consumer‑friendly option. For Western readers: this is more than product positioning — it’s part of a broader push by Chinese companies to build resilient, lower‑cost AI ecosystems amid geopolitical pressure and chip supply uncertainty.

What’s next

Expect more vocal marketing from Chinese rivals and faster rollouts of local token plans. Will they materially reduce costs and absorb the token demand? Or will compute scarcity and international trade frictions cap growth? Either way, the episode shows how commercial product decisions by US AI startups can ripple globally — and how China’s AI players are ready to pounce.