Trump's World Liberty Financial partners with restricted Chinese company to offer AI

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Crypto company backed by President Donald Trump, World Liberty Financial, is connected to WorldClaw, a Hong Kong platform that offers access to Chinese AI models that have been marked by the U.S. government as security risks, according to a report by Reuters on Monday.

Flagged Chinese labs fill WorldClaw AI menu

WorldClaw has a catalogue of about 90 AI models on its routing service platform, with a Reuters review stating that 43 of them come from Chinese developers, including Alibaba, Baidu, Z.ai, DeepSeek, and Moonshot. OpenAI and Anthropic also have models available on the platform.

Several of these Chinese firms have particular U.S. government labels regarding their use. The Department of Defense has named Alibaba and Baidu as Chinese military-affiliated companies, a status barring the Pentagon from working with them in any capacity.

Z.ai, formerly Zhipu AI, sits on the Commerce Department’s entity list, which restricts its access to U.S. technology and forces American firms to seek an export license that is presumptively denied. The government listing also accuses Z.ai of advancing China’s military capabilities through advanced AI.

DeepSeek and Moonshot complete the names of marked out AI companies. Trump admin officials have accused both of building their systems on intellectual property stolen from American rivals. Moonshot has denied these allegations, however.

USD1 stablecoin is the connection

WorldClaw accepts USD1, World Liberty’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, as a form of payment for its services on the platform. USD1 is backed by multiple assets including U.S. Treasury securities, and the Trump family is entitled to a cut of the interest earned from these reserves. Every purchase completed using the USD1 stablecoin helps towards sustaining the WLFI venture partly owned by the Trump family.

Token sales at World Liberty have delivered the Trump family more than $1.4 billion, part of The Trump family has acquired about $2.3 billion from crypto in total. The firm recently won preliminary U.S. approval for a national bank charter built around the same USD1 stablecoin.

It is also worth noting that Ryan Fang, World Liberty’s head of growth, has previously advised WorldClaw in a role the AI platform has described as strictly advisory and focused on USD1 adoption and wider access to AI services. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have also previously promoted WorldClaw on X.

Risks are even greater than trade policy

A senior fellow at the Center for New American Security who previously advised the State Department, Daniel Remler, has warned that Chinese models available on WorldClaw could expose users to Chinese government monitoring and malicious code that could potentially hijack independent AI agents.

WorldClaw also states on its website that the information users enter may be passed on to the companies whose models power the platform.

The WorldClaw platform claims it has over 10,000 users and handles over 50 million requested tasks a day, a demand driven in part by the lower cost of Chinese models. Usage of these models remains generally legal for individuals and companies in the U.S..

Both sides claim no “conflict of interest”

Both companies have vehemently rejected the consensus that this connection is a conflict of interest. David Wachsman, a World Liberty spokesman, said WorldClaw was an independent company and stated that large U.S. firms also resell Chinese-built AI. A WorldClaw spokesperson has claimed that the platform “helps American AI companies reach international users” and that the mdoel listings on the platform do not “constitute an endorsement of its developer.”

The White House offered the same defense. Spokesperson Anna Kelly said there “are no conflicts of interest” in the relationship and that “President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public.”

However, external experts remain not as convinced. “As the U.S. government tries to respond to the rise and threat of Chinese AI, it seems hypocritical to go out through WorldClaw to use these tools from China to try and make a bunch of money,” said Sam Bresnick, a fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

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