Anthropic Restricted Spillover Effect Emerges: Asian AI Companies Simultaneously Launch Benchmark Frontier Models

Odaily Planet Daily News As Anthropic faces export restrictions that limit the global availability of its advanced models, multiple Asian AI companies are accelerating their efforts to fill the market gap. Chinese cybersecurity company 360 Security Technology has reportedly launched an AI tool called "Tulongfeng," claiming it can directly compete with Anthropic's high-end model "Mythos." Meanwhile, its more restricted version, "Fable 5," also falls within the scope of relevant export controls.

In the same week, Japanese AI startup Sakana AI released a new model named "Fugu," after the pufferfish, positioning it as a frontier model for AI agents. The company stated that the model can rival the capabilities of Fable 5 and Mythos Preview, and supports coordinating multiple model calls via API to enable agent orchestration.

Sakana AI emphasized that the timing of this release is a "pure coincidence" with the US export restrictions. However, the product's official website still explicitly promotes "delivering frontier capabilities without the risk of export controls." Company co-founder David Ha stated that the future of AI development will shift from competition over single large models to "model orchestration systems," and stressed that "access may be revoked at any time, making distributed intelligence a realistic hedge against centralized risks."

On the other hand, Zhou Hongyi, founder of China's 360, regards AI vulnerability detection capabilities as a "national strategic asset" and warned of the so-called "one-way transparency" risk, meaning that certain entities may monopolize advanced security capabilities.

Reportedly, the US export restrictions on Anthropic's advanced models have been in place for about two weeks. Against this backdrop, Asian manufacturers are accelerating the launch of local alternatives. Although some companies still emphasize the importance of US models in the Asian market, the trend of fragmentation in the regional AI ecosystem has begun to emerge. (TechCrunch)