Alibaba’s Qwen hits 3 billion downloads, outpacing China and US AI rivals
Download and derivative-model figures are one measure of influence in the US-China AI race
Alibaba's Qwen AI model has amassed over 3 billion downloads in the past six months, surpassing rivals from the United States and China, including Meta and Google. Qwen, developed by Alibaba, has open-sourced more than 460 models, generating a vast ecosystem of over 300,000 derivative models. These open models can be freely customized and utilized as building blocks for new AI products, making their popularity an indicator of developers' choices.
As Chinese developers, such as Alibaba, produce capable yet affordable models that are easy to adapt, download and derivative-model figures have become a measure of influence in the US-China AI race. Alibaba's Qwen represents one of the largest foundations in the open AI ecosystem, according to a report by Hugging Face, a popular open-source AI hub.
This rise suggests that Alibaba's strategy of creating relatively cheap and adaptable models is gaining traction beyond China. Alibaba is capitalizing on this by distributing Qwen through its cloud platform to enterprise customers in various markets, including Southeast Asia and Africa, giving it a reach that many rivals lack. US tech giants are also responding to the growing competition by releasing new open AI models.
Written by urgent.news from The Business Times - Companies & Markets's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
