Alibaba’s AI Ambitions Explode with Qwen3 Launch | Image Source: www.scmp.com
HANGZHOU, China, April 2, 2025 – In the heart of Zhejiang province, Alibaba will rewrite the scenario of the country’s artificial intelligence landscape. With the early release of Qwen 3, the next generation in its iconic series of great language models (LLM), Alibaba not only keeps up with the world leaders of AI, but also establishes tempo. According to Bloomberg and other family sources with the question, Qwen 3 is expected to fall later this month, reinforcing Alibaba’s aggressive expansion into open-source artificial intelligence and increasing its competition with domestic heavy goods vehicles such as DeepSeek.
The upcoming launch of Qwen 3 illustrates Alibaba’s continued commitment to artificial intelligence despite a market traditionally dominated by its e-commerce activities. It’s also a strategic positioning story: focusing on open source models and infrastructure rather than niche applications, Alibaba places its chips to become the backbone of AI innovation in China. But what makes this announcement different is not only the model itself, it is the ecosystem and history that Alibaba cultivates behind the scenes.
How has Alibaba moved from electronic commerce to the engine of artificial intelligence?
Founded in 1999 by Jack Ma, Alibaba was originally conceived as a market that connects Chinese exporters to global buyers. Over the decades, it has become synonymous with online shopping across China through platforms such as Taobao and Tmall. However, while these platforms still represent the lion’s share of Alibaba’s revenues, their vision has moved silently towards a future where it serves as a provider of digital infrastructure, particularly in cloud computing and AI.
According to the South China Morning Post, the transformation did not take place in a vacuum. More than 85 AI startups were created by former Alibaba employees, with 45% in Hangzhou, the company’s hometown. Among the most remarkable are Rokide, the manufacturer of smart glasses founded by former engineer Alibaba Mas Zhu Mingming. Zhu, who left the company in 2014, credits his time to Alibaba to fill critical knowledge gaps in operations, finance and marketing. Rokide’s development with DeepSeek and Unite Robotics gained recognition as one of Hangzhou’s “seven small dragons” in technological innovation.
What is Qwen 3, and why is it important?
Although Alibaba has not yet published official details, the authors suggest that Qwen 3 will be delivered in at least two main variants: a standard version and Qwen3-MoE, which uses a mix of experts (MoE). The MoE allows models to activate different sets of neural pathways depending on the manual task, resulting in lower costs and better performance. This is a similar approach used by DeepSeek in its V3 model, which has gained in praise for being profitable, maintaining parity with Western development models.
This is not Alibaba’s first entry into multimodal and advanced LLM. Last week, the company launched Qwen2.5-Omni-7B, a powerful model capable of processing text, images, audio and video. The output of graphics immediately at Hugging Face, the AI open source repository, even exceeding the updated V3 model of DeepSeek in popularity. This momentum is good for the adoption of Qwen 3, especially among developers building next-generation AI applications in China and beyond.
Why is time critical in the AI arms race?
Time in technology can be everything. The release of Qwen 2.5-Max earlier this year took place on the first day of the lunar new year, a surprising move since most of China was on vacation. This unusual decision, according to Reuters, highlighted the urgency Alibaba felt in responding to DeepSeek’s sudden popularity after the launch of its R1 and V3 models.
DeepSeek’s rise has attracted the attention of the world, especially to achieve Western performance at a fraction of the cost. His next model, scheduled for May, pushed Alibaba to innovate quickly. The imminent release of Qwen 3 is not just a software update, it’s a statement. A sign that Alibaba refuses to play the second violin in the fast-changing IA space.
How does Alibaba’s influence on technology increase?
Alibaba’s AI reader is not limited to product launches. It builds an ecosystem – an unofficial “IA Academy” – through the proliferation of startups like Rokid, DeepSeek and others founded by former employees. These companies not only adopt artificial intelligence technologies, but also spread the internal Alibaba culture of speed, iteration and thinking of infrastructure.
According to ITJuzi, China’s main starting database, the density of Alibaba students among AI founders suggests a powerful wavy effect. These founders have not only technical skills but also institutional information on scale, user behaviour and market economy, but are essential to produce effective AI products. Alibaba exports its DNA through the Chinese AI sector.
What are the general implications for overall IA competition?
While US companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind have received great attention to push AI’s boundaries for general purposes, China’s efforts have often travelled under radar. It’s starting to change. According to Bloomberg, Alibaba’s Qwen3 project aims to strengthen its leadership in open source AI models, an area where Western companies are increasingly protected by exclusive advances.
Qwen3 and its predecessors highlight scalability and flexibility, attracting researchers and companies to build customized solutions based on reliable and generally used models. This approach reflects that of Hugging Face in the West but with localized nuances, such as support from Mandarin, integration with Chinese platforms and government regulatory compliance.
Is Qwen 3 talking about technology or is it a cultural change?
There is a more subtle but equally significant transformation. Alibaba, formerly considered an e-commerce burglar, is being relocated as an AWS equivalent (Amazon Web Services) China for AI infrastructure. The symbolism of this change cannot be exaggerated. It is no longer about selling products, but about allowing others to innovate.
An analogy could be drawn with Microsoft’s pivot in the early 1940s – from treasury software to cloud services. Alibaba walks on a similar path. And like Microsoft, it bets a lot on developers, open source communities and long-standing innovation that emerges when tools are freely and widely available.
What do users and developers say?
Initial feedback from developers who tested Alibaba’s recent Qwen2.5-Omni-7B model was encouraging. Many welcomed their ability to respond to Mandarin, their flexibility in handling multimodal inputs and their easy integration into existing batteries. It is this developer-centred approach that can give Alibaba an advantage over companies like DeepSeek, which are still heavily focused on research.
As several users of Hugging Face and Chinese technology forums say, Alibaba’s models are easier to deploy and come with complete documentation: a big victory for start-ups who cannot afford to make a difference just to get a model running.
Then what about Alibaba and Qwen?
Although Qwen’s exact release date remains informal, several reports suggest that it will be launched by the end of April. Alibaba Cloud should lead the start-up, offering an independent API and cloud entry points for businesses. Beyond this, entrepreneurs speculate that Alibaba can start to form Qwen4 using hybrid architectures and multimodal data sets, which means even greater investment in AI’s fundamental technologies.
Alibaba’s roadmap seems clear: not only for competition, but for setting standards. Whether it is model architecture, developer support or open source credibility, the technology giant is focusing on the long-term domain of the AI ecosystem. And if current trends continue, they could be faster than expected.
According to SCMP and Reuters, Alibaba’s AI strategy has entered a maturity phase, reflecting a broader development of Chinese technology companies that are moving away from consumer services to B2B infrastructure and innovation. With Qwen3 to make headlines soon, the eyes of the AI world will be closely monitored, not only for performance benchmarks, but for how it resonates with the growing community of AI manufacturers inside and outside China.
In a world where AI is becoming the new operating system for businesses and society, Alibaba’s transformation from a commercial platform to a fundamental technological player marks one of the most convincing changes in global technology today.
