Could Alibaba lead open source AI development?

In August 2023, Alibaba released its first open model, Qwen-7B, which has since inspired the development of over 90,000 derivative models globally.

It’s been more than two weeks since DeepSeek was released, creating a topsy turvy situation among tech vendors around the world, especially in how the future of AI is seemingly headed towards. While the capabilities and cost of developing DeepSeek continues to be discussed in all levels globally, the reality is, there is no slowing down innovation, especially when it comes to GenAI.

For Joe Tsai, Chairman and Co-founder of Alibaba Group, the “DeepSeek moment” caused a panic both in the industry and in the financial markets. In an opinion piece to South China Morning Post, Tsai mentioned that there are two implications for the industry form the development of DeepSeek.

First, Tsia believes the tech vendors need to rethink the goal of AI development as it's no longer about being the smartest but being able to develop AI use cases that can drive economic impact. Secondly, he believes that open-source models will lead to the democratization of AI, ensuring everyone can get access to the piece of the pie.

“In the future, entrepreneurs and companies will begin to focus on specialized AI models that drive economic impact, that are useful and productive. This is good for innovation, because making AI less costly and more accessible means more companies and developers can participate in the upside of AI development, and more consumers will benefit from the proliferation of useful and cool applications,” said Tsai.

Alibaba’s AI journey

Compared to other vendors around the world, Alibaba’s tech development, be it for AI or any other emerging technology, continues to be on par with the industry requirements. While local competitors in China continue to face sanctions and restrictions in development from the US, Alibaba has played the game in a way that ensures it meets all the requirements and regulations set by both the US and China.

As such, the Chinese Group has revamped its business model, announcing a restructuring in March 2023 to split the company into six major business groups and several subsidiaries under the Alibaba Group umbrella. The move has since proven successful Alibaba with each unit reporting positive growth since the restructuring.

When it comes to AI, Alibaba may be playing catchup initially but has since caught up with the rest of the world in terms of developing more capabilities for its AI models. In open-source, Alibaba’s flagship platform, ModelScope is also China’s largest open source community. ModelScope provides startups, small businesses, researchers, and developers with access to state-of-the-art AI models that are freely accessible.

In August 2023, Alibaba released its first open model, Qwen-7B, which has since inspired the development of over 90,000 derivative models globally. The subsequent release of 100 new Qwen2.5 models in 2024—ranging from 0.5 to 72 billion parameters—introduced enhanced capabilities in multilingual understanding, coding, and mathematics.

To cultivate a competitive and inclusive AI ecosystem, Qwen2.5-VL and Qwen2.5-1M, AliBaba’s multi-modal models, have demonstrated advanced capabilities in processing complex inputs and visual reasoning. Their widespread adoption highlights Alibaba’s ability to lead in both technical innovation and practical application.

SCMP also reported that Qwen model surpassed DeepSeek-V3 to become the top-ranked non-reasoning model from a Chinese developer, according to a third-party benchmarking and ranking platform. The Qwen2.5 Max model has climbed to seventh place on Chatbot Arena, a benchmarking project developed by computer scientists from UC Berkeley to evaluate the performance of large language models (LLMs) – the technology underpinning chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Alibaba also became the first company worldwide to release a reasoning AI model, QwQ, as open source, reflecting its dedication to transparency and collaboration within the industry. QwQ’s analytical capabilities and open availability reinforce Alibaba’s vision of a diverse and trustworthy AI ecosystem.

At the same time, Apple has also partnered with Alibaba to run its AI features on devices in China. The move, which Apple hopes can boost its presence in the Chinese market marks also a big win for the Chinese tech company as it offers them the opportunity to showcase Alibaba’s Qwen capabilities on Apple devices.