Alibaba’s AI models reach 3 billion downloads, outpacing Meta and Google

Alibaba Group Holding's Qwen AI models have surpassed 3 billion global downloads in the past six months, outpacing Meta Platforms Inc and Alphabet Inc to become the world's leading artificial intelligence model. Qwen is an open-weight model family consisting of over 460 open-source models, with more than 300,000 derivatives created from it, Alibaba announced in an emailed statement.

Google, part of Alphabet, reported 418 million downloads, while Meta had 227 million in 2022, according to Hugging Face Inc, an open-source AI hub, which published a state of open models report on August 14. Open models can be freely downloaded, customized, and used as building blocks for new AI products, making the download and derivative-model figures a gauge of which technologies developers are adopting.

Alibaba's Qwen strategy, which emphasizes affordable and adaptable models, is gaining traction beyond China as Chinese developers, including Alibaba, produce capable models. Qwen's rise indicates that this strategy is spreading beyond China, competing with closed models from US companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. Alibaba's download data for Qwen positions it as one of the largest foundations in the open AI ecosystem.

The Hangzhou-based cloud, e-commerce, and AI technology company is outperforming local rivals, such as DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax, as well as US models. Qwen has become a default choice for developers when choosing models to fine-tune and deploy. Alibaba has strengthened this cycle by distributing Qwen through its cloud platform to enterprise customers in markets like Southeast Asia and Africa, providing access that many rivals lack. US tech giants are responding to the competition by releasing new open AI models.