Alibaba Updates Qwen AI Models for Global Users

Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud unit has updated its range of artificial intelligence-powered products available outside China in a bid to attract new customers from countries around the world.

Image source: alibabagroup.com

Alibaba Cloud has expanded its PaaS (platform as a service) capabilities and beefed up its AI product lineup with new offerings: the large language model Qwen-Max and the DeepSeek R1-like reasoning model QwQ-Plus. The expansion into Singapore shows that Alibaba is ramping up its campaign to attract AI users and developers both inside and outside China.

Since DeepSeek’s January launch, the Chinese e-commerce and cloud computing giant has accelerated its development and release cycles for AI products, including business analytics tools for developers that cost individuals as little as $1 a year. DeepSeek has forced the entire Chinese AI industry to flood the market with low-cost, if not free, services.

Alibaba is set to release another major update in April, the flagship Qwen 3. The company previously unveiled a new version of its Quark AI assistant, which includes chatbot capabilities, reasoning, and task execution. In addition to cloud services aimed at attracting AI app developers to its platform, the company unveiled a new set of SaaS (software as a service) products. These included AI Doc, a document analysis tool, and Smart Studio, a tool for creating content using generative AI.