Alibaba’s Qwen3 topples DeepSeek’s R1 as world’s highest-ranked open-source AI model

Alibaba Group Holding’s newly released Qwen3 family of artificial intelligence (AI) models has overtaken DeepSeek’s R1 to become the world’s top-ranked open-source model, according to the industry’s latest benchmark tests.

Data from LiveBench, an independent platform that benchmarks large language models (LLMs) – the technology underpinning generative AI services like ChatGPT – showed that Qwen3 surpassed R1 in tests that gauge open-source AI models’ capabilities including coding, maths, data analysis and language instruction. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Hangzhou-based Alibaba’s cloud computing unit last week released the Qwen3 family, which consists of eight enhanced models that range from 600 million to 235 billion parameters. In machine learning, parameters are the variables present in an AI system during training, which helps establish how data prompts yield the desired output.

The open-source approach gives public access to a program’s source code, allowing third-party software developers to modify or share its design, fix broken links or scale up its capabilities. Open-source technologies have been a huge contributor to China’s tech industry over the past few decades.