Key Highlights:

• Alibaba launches Qwen-3.5 with open and closed versions
  
• 60% cheaper and 8× stronger at handling large workloads
  
• Built for the emerging “agentic AI” era
  

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Alibaba Unveils Qwen-3.5 Ahead of Lunar New Year

Alibaba Cloud has introduced its next-generation AI model family, Qwen-3.5, just ahead of the Lunar New Year. The launch is part of a broader wave of new flagship AI releases from major Chinese developers. The models are available through Alibaba Cloud’s Model Studio and are designed to strengthen China’s position in the global AI race.

Two Models, Different Strategies

The company released Qwen-3.5-Open-Source, a 397-billion-parameter model whose weights are publicly available on Hugging Face and ModelScope. Alibaba claims it outperforms its earlier trillion-parameter model while matching leading systems from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind.

Qwen-3.5-Plus remains closed-source and offers a 1-million-token context window, targeting enterprise customers and large deployments.

Built for the Agentic AI Era

Alibaba says Qwen-3.5 is 60% cheaper to use and delivers eight times better performance on large workloads compared to its predecessor. It includes multimodal features, understanding text, images, audio, and video. The model also introduces “visual agentic capabilities,” allowing it to operate mobile and desktop apps and complete multi-step tasks independently.

Intensifying Chinese AI Competition

Qwen competes with Chinese rivals such as ByteDance’s Doubao and DeepSeek. With expanded support for 201 languages and growing global downloads, Alibaba’s latest release signals rising competition between Chinese AI leaders.

Impact on Global AI Leaders

The launch of Qwen-3.5 increases competitive pressure on global AI leaders like OpenAI (ChatGPT), Anthropic (Claude), and xAI (Grok). While it may not immediately reduce their global user base, it strengthens China’s domestic alternatives and expands open-weight adoption worldwide. If Qwen delivers similar performance at lower cost, it could attract developers, startups, and enterprises looking for cheaper large-context models.

However, brand trust, ecosystem integration, and enterprise partnerships still give US firms a strong advantage outside China. In short, it may not disrupt them overnight, but it clearly raises the competitive stakes.

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