Bankers at JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong were blocked from using Anthropic’s AI models after the banks pulled access in April and last week respectively, citing Anthropic’s terms of use reflecting Washington’s restrictions on China’s access to frontier American AI models. The Financial Times warned that preventing access to advanced AI models threatens Hong Kong’s revival as an international financial centre, given their rapid adoption elsewhere, particularly for coding. A US Commerce Department directive this month denies all foreigners access to Anthropic’s most advanced Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, including Anthropic’s own foreign employees, and gave the firm 90 minutes to shut off access citing national security. China’s AI industry may emerge as the real winner, as most users blocked from America’s most advanced models will switch to Chinese firms’ “good enough” models, which charge a fraction of the cost.