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Qwen

Qwen
Qwen is a multipurpose artificial intelligence consumer app created by Alibaba as a personal AI assistant for professional and personal use, and powered by the Alibaba Cloud software. Its functionality includes research, image generation and slide generation. Alibaba Cloud is the AI and cloud computing unit of Hangzhou-based Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post.
The logo of Meta Platforms is seen outside its headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Photo: TNS
Artificial intelligence

AI race: Meta reportedly uses Alibaba’s Qwen for its ‘Avocado’ model

Reported move to reinvigorate Meta’s faltering AI effort with new ‘Avocado’ model is another likely win for Chinese AI.

Artificial intelligence

Alibaba creates new unit to push consumer use of its Qwen AI models

Artificial intelligence

Chinese open-source models account for 30% of global AI use: report

US-China tech war

Editorial | China’s low-cost AI is showing up America’s high-cost tech model

The real China threat is in exposing America’s AI myths by showing what can be achieved at much lower costs and with greater efficiency.

Screens showing DeepSeek and OpenAI on January 29 in Toulouse, southwestern France. The American notion is that AI is capital-intensive, perhaps more so than any other US industry today. Photo: AFP
Artificial intelligence

Alibaba’s Qwen app becomes the world’s fastest growing AI app as MAUs surge 149%

Just two weeks into its public beta, Qwen has shown explosive growth, underscoring Alibaba’s challenge to global rivals OpenAI and Google.

Artificial intelligence

Alibaba Cloud team wins top AI award for breakthrough in model efficiency

The research could help reduce training and inference costs for Alibaba’s next generation Qwen models without sacrificing accuracy.

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Tencent

Alibaba bets on ‘everything app’ Qwen to define AI era for global consumers

Qwen has the potential to become super-app, the same way Tencent’s WeChat defined the mobile internet age, analysts say.

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The Qwen app is designed to meet both the professional and personal needs of users, with capabilities including deep research, image generation and slide generation. Photo: Handout
Alibaba

Alibaba’s Qwen app challenges AI subscription models with free access

The new app is designed to be a free-of-charge, comprehensive AI assistant in both professional and personal settings.

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Alibaba

Alibaba revamps chatbot amid US ‘panic’ over firm’s AI progress

Alibaba dubs the updated app, renamed from Tongyi to Qwen, the ‘most powerful official AI assistant’ for its Qwen models.

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Artificial intelligence

Alibaba slashes Qwen3-Max model charges up to 50% amid latest AI price war

The new pricing strategy reflects heightened competition in China’s foundational model market.

Qwen3-Max is the first trillion-parameter model from Alibaba’s AI and cloud services unit. Photo: Shutterstock
Artificial intelligence

This AI model’s US$10,000 investment has the best return. Guess who?

Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen3-Max posts a 22.32 per cent return on a US$10,000 investment in two weeks, topping a “real money” AI crypto trading test.

Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen3-Max model generated a 22.32 per cent return on an initial investment of US$10,000 over two weeks. Photo: Shutterstock

Meet the young engineers steering Alibaba’s AI future at Tongyi Lab

A look at the achievements and research directions of the lead architects at Alibaba’s core AI engineering team.

Artificial intelligence

DeepSeek and Qwen AI models crush Western rivals in cryptocurrency trading challenge

In a real-world test of trading intelligence, China’s DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen AI models have outpaced their Western rivals including GPT.

Artificial intelligence

Airbnb chooses Alibaba’s open-source AI over ‘not ready’ ChatGPT

Airbnb ‘relies heavily’ on Alibaba’s Qwen models to power its AI customer service agent, CEO Brian Chesky says.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. Photo: AFP
Alibaba

Alibaba’s Qwen lab sets up robotics team, showcasing its AI ambitions

The announcement suggests the Chinese tech giant is accelerating its development in the field of AI-powered hardware.

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Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou, China’s eastern Zhejiang province. Photo: Reuters
Artificial intelligence

Alibaba transfers AI scientist Steven Hoi to Tongyi Lab, boosting Qwen efforts

At Tongyi Lab, Hoi is expected to help further develop Qwen, the world’s largest open-source AI ecosystem.

Alibaba

Alibaba model tops global AI rankings as Chinese open systems flourish

Alibaba’s open-source models make up half of the top 10 spots on Hugging Face’s trending rankings.

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Artificial intelligence

Alibaba: latest AI model Qwen3-Max rivals best from OpenAI, Google

Alibaba Cloud announced the Qwen3-Max model, with over 1 trillion parameters, just hours ahead of the annual Apsara Conference in Hangzhou.

Qwen3-Max is not open-sourced but is accessible through Alibaba’s cloud computing platform. Photo: Shutterstock Images
Artificial intelligence

Alibaba releases record-setting next-generation Qwen3 model to cut costs by 90%

A variant of the new model is 10 times more powerful and can be built at a 10th of the cost of its predecessor, Qwen developers say.

Artificial intelligence

Alibaba’s Qwen3 and Moonshot’s Kimi-K2 storm into global AI rankings

Qwen3-max-preview and Kimi-K2-0905 debut in sixth and seventh place, respectively, in the latest ‘text-arena’ ranking by LMArena.

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Artificial intelligence

Alibaba’s Qwen 3 AI coding model gains on Claude Sonnet 4 in popularity

The model’s usage share on AI marketplace OpenRouter hit 20 per cent as of mid-August, behind only Anthropic’s coding model.

A number of Chinese tech majors have all released AI coding tools to ride on the so-called vibe coding wave. Photo: Shutterstock
Alibaba

Alibaba’s maps app gets an AI upgrade with Qwen-powered agent

Named Teacher Xiaogao, the tool allows Alibaba to deploy its advanced AI models in practical scenarios, such as navigation and trip planning.

An Alibaba booth at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai last month. Photo: EPA
DeepSeek

DeepSeek’s AI dominance in China challenged by Alibaba’s Qwen

DeepSeek has seen use of its models drop to 80 per cent from 99 per cent on Chinese cloud computing platform PPIO.

Artificial intelligence

Alibaba unleashes Qwen3 coding model for developers to push AI agent adoption

In new benchmark tests, Alibaba’s Qwen3-Coder outperformed rival models from Moonshot AI and DeepSeek.

Alibaba

Alibaba upgrades Qwen3 model to outperform OpenAI, DeepSeek in maths, coding

A member of the Qwen3 family gets an upgrade and outperforms products from rivals OpenAI and DeepSeek.

The Qwen logo is seen displayed on a smartphone screen. Photo: Shutterstock Images
Artificial intelligence

Alibaba AI model-based agentic framework tops global ranking

DeepSWE, trained on the Qwen3-32B model, scored 59 per cent accuracy in the latest industry benchmark to outperform a DeepSeek-V3 variant.

Artificial intelligence agents are software programs that are capable of autonomously performing tasks on behalf of a user or another system. Photo: Shutterstock
Artificial intelligence

Alibaba updates open-source Qwen3 models for AI deployment on Apple devices

This development appears to reflect Apple’s efforts to expand the availability of its Apple Intelligence suite to mainland China.

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Artificial intelligence

Alibaba pushes global adoption of Qwen3 AI models via more developer platforms

The Qwen3 family of AI models can now be deployed via large language model platforms Ollama, LM Studio, SGLang and vLLM.

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