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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.
Illustration by Lau Ka-kuen
Artificial intelligence

Sea change: China narrows AI gap with US 3 years after ChatGPT shock

The turning point came when DeepSeek released its V3 and R1 models, which were on par with OpenAI’s GPT and Meta’s Llama models at the time.

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Artificial intelligence

Meta sees role reversal as it adopts Alibaba’s Qwen to train AI models

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Artificial intelligence

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

Artificial intelligence

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

Significant organisational change underlines company’s determination to turn the Qwen chatbot into a ‘super app’.

Alibaba has been driving the adoption and commercialisation of the Qwen series over the past two years amid the global AI surge. Photo: Reuters
Artificial intelligence

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

Producing globally competitive models makes China a close peer of the US in AI development.

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.

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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.

Qwen recorded the highest growth in monthly active users among AI products globally at 149 per cent. Photo: Reuters
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.

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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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 Cloud has officially launched its Qwen AI assistant app. Photo: Shutterstock Images
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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Alibaba has been stepping up efforts to monetise Qwen-based applications. Photo: Shutterstock
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.

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.

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.

The Alibaba booth at the 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai in July. Photo: Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images
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.

DeepSeek’s Chat V3.1 model grew its initial capital of US$10,000 to US$22,900 in the showdown. Photo: Reuters
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.

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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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 Cloud’s Qwen family of models is the world’s largest open-source AI ecosystem. Photo: Shutterstock
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.

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.

Alibaba Cloud’s latest open-source AI model, the Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B, features 80 billion parameters. Photo: Shutterstock
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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Alibaba’s Qwen logo seen next to a humanoid robot. Photo: Shutterstock Images
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.

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.

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.

DeepSeek remains the most popular AI model on cloud computing platform PPIO. Photo: dpa
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’s Qwen3-Coder is expected to give developers a boost in creating AI agents. Photo: Shutterstock
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.

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.

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