Advertisement
Alibaba
TechBig Tech

Alibaba unveils new open-source AI embedding models, a field it leads globally

The Chinese tech giant ranks top on Hugging Face’s benchmark for measuring the performance of text-embedding services

Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0
Alibaba has released a new series of embedding models under the Qwen brand. Photo: Shutterstock
Sam Phillips
Alibaba Group Holding has made its Qwen3 Embedding series available for developers, in the Chinese tech giant’s latest bid to solidify its global leadership in open-source artificial intelligence (AI) models.
Released late on Thursday, the series marks another addition to the company’s line-up of large language models (LLMs), which are among the world’s most popular open-source AI systems, according to New York-based computer app company Hugging Face.

Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post, ranks third globally in the field of LLMs, according to the 2025 AI Index Report from Stanford University.

The new models, which come in various parameters, “support over 100 languages, including multiple programming languages, and provide robust multilingual, cross-lingual and code retrieval capabilities”, according to Alibaba.

11:13

How Alibaba.com is betting on AI to transform e-commerce

How Alibaba.com is betting on AI to transform e-commerce

In AI, an embedding model helps computers understand and process text by turning it into numerical representations. Since computers process data solely in numerical form, the embedding process enables them to grasp semantic data and questions more effectively, delivering more tailored results that do not rely solely on keywords.

Advertisement