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Alibaba’s Qwen-3 becomes one of world’s first AI models to operate in orbit
The entire Qwen-3 process – from uploading queries to on-orbit inference and sending results back to Earth – took less than two minutes
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Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen-3 became one of the world’s first general-purpose artificial intelligence models to be uploaded and operated in orbit, marking a milestone in China’s bid to lead the nascent space-based computing sector.
Chinese aerospace start-up Adaspace Technology successfully deployed Qwen-3 to a space computing centre in orbit where it executed multiple inference tasks in November, according to company executive vice-president Wang Yabo, who spoke at a conference on Monday, as reported by the Star Market Daily.
The move followed closely on earlier US demonstrations of space-based AI, highlighting intensifying global competition in off-Earth computing.
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Washington-based Starcloud ran Gemma, an open large language model from Google based on the company’s Gemini models, in orbit late last year, according to a recent CNBC report.
Alibaba Cloud is the AI and cloud computing services unit of Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the South China Morning Post.
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Wang said Qwen-3 was deployed in Adaspace’s initial space computing centre that formed part of the firm’s “Star-Compute Project”, a 2,800-satellite network designed to power physical AI and support AI model training and inference.
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