Alibaba launches new Qwen LLMs in China's latest open-source AI breakthrough
In a blog post, the Chinese tech giant said Qwen3 promises improvements in reasoning, instruction following, tool usage and multilingual tasks, rivaling other top-tier models such as DeepSeek's R1 in several industry benchmarks.
The LLM series includes eight variations that span a range of architectures and sizes, offering developers flexibility when using Qwen to build AI applications for edge devices like mobile phones.
Qwen3 is also Alibaba's debut into so-called "hybrid reasoning models," which it says combines traditional LLM capabilities with "advanced, dynamic reasoning."
According to Alibaba, such models can seamlessly transition between a "thinking mode" for complex tasks such as coding and a "non-thinking mode" for faster, general-purpose responses.
"Notably, the Qwen3-235B-A22B MoE model significantly lowers deployment costs compared to other state-of-the-art models, reinforcing Alibaba's commitment to accessible, high-performance AI," Alibaba said.
The new models are already freely available for individual users on platforms like Hugging Face and GitHub, as well as Alibaba Cloud's web interface. Qwen3 is also being used to power Alibaba's AI assistant, Quark.
AI analysts told CNBC that the Qwen3 represents a serious challenge to Alibaba's counterparts in China, as well as industry leaders in the U.S.
In a statement to CNBC, Wei Sun, principal analyst of artificial intelligence at Counterpoint Research, said the Qwen3 series is a "significant breakthrough—not just for its best-in-class performance" but also for several features that point to the "application potential of the models."
Those features include Qwen3's hybrid thinking mode, its multilingual support covering 119 languages and dialects and its open-source availability, Sun added.
Open-source software generally refers to software in which the source code is made freely available on the web for possible modification and redistribution. At the start of this year, DeepSeek's open-sourced R1 model rocked the AI world and quickly became a catalyst for China's AI space and open-source model adoption.
"Alibaba's release of the Qwen 3 series further underscores the strong capabilities of Chinese labs to develop highly competitive, innovative, and open-source models, despite mounting pressure from tightened U.S. export controls," said Ray Wang, a Washington-based analyst focusing on U.S.-China economic and technology competition.
According to Alibaba, Qwen has already become one of the world's most widely adopted open-source AI model series, attracting over 300 million downloads worldwide and more than 100,000 derivative models on Hugging Face.
Wang said that this adoption could continue with Qwen3, adding that its performance claims may make it the best open-source model globally — though still behind the world's most cutting-edge models like OpenAI's o3 and o4-mini.
Chinese competitors like Baidu have also rushed to release new AI models after the emergence of DeepSeek, including making plans to shift toward a more open-source business model.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported in February that DeepSeek is accelerating the launch of its successor to its R1, citing anonymous sources.
"In the broader context of the U.S.-China AI race, the gap between American and Chinese labs has narrowed—likely to a few months, and some might argue, even to just weeks," Wang said.
"With the latest release of Qwen 3 and the upcoming launch of DeepSeek's R2, this gap is unlikely to widen—and may even continue to shrink."
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