World Liberty Financial, the crypto company backed by President Donald Trump, is connected to WorldClaw, a Hong Kong platform that offers access to Chinese AI models the U.S. government has flagged as security risks, according to a report by Reuters published on Monday. The link sits at the intersection of two areas already drawing heavy scrutiny in Washington: foreign AI access and the Trump family’s expanding crypto business.

Flagged Chinese labs fill WorldClaw's AI menu

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

Several of these Chinese firms carry specific designations from the U.S. government. The Department of Defense has named Alibaba and Baidu as Chinese military-affiliated companies, a status that bars the Pentagon from working with them in any capacity.

Z.ai, formerly known as Zhipu AI, sits on the Commerce Department's entity list, which restricts its access to U.S. technology and requires 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 list of flagged AI companies. Trump administration officials have accused both of building their systems on intellectual property stolen from American rivals. Moonshot has denied those allegations.

The USD1 stablecoin 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 sustain the WLFI venture, which the Trump family partly owns.

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

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

Security concerns extend beyond trade policy

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

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

The platform claims it has more than 10,000 users and handles over 50 million requested tasks a day, a level of demand driven in part by the lower cost of Chinese models. Usage of these models remains generally legal for individuals and companies in the United States, which helps explain why the issue is less about bans on end users than about the policy and reputational tension around who benefits from the traffic.

Both sides deny a conflict of interest

Both companies have vehemently rejected the suggestion that the connection amounts to 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 claimed that the platform "helps American AI companies reach international users" and that the model 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."

External experts, however, remain unconvinced. "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.