AQ
Open-Weight Lab
Alibaba Qwen
Open, multimodal models at every size.
ValuationPart of Alibaba
FundingAlibaba-funded; $50B+ AI capex plan
FlagshipQwen3.8-Max
Founded2023 · Hangzhou
79
Bright Sentience Score
Rank #14 of 23
What they're building
Qwen is the most downloaded open-weight model family in the world. Qwen3.8-Max (1M context, multimodal agents and coding) is Alibaba's premium tier, while Qwen3.8-Flash ships open weights with text, image and video input.
Latest developments
- Qwen3.8-Max (Aug 3, 2026): premium tier with 1M context.
- Qwen3.8-Flash (Aug 26, 2026): open weights, multimodal, 1M context.
- Qwen powers Alibaba Cloud, Taobao and a large share of Chinese AI startups.
Why it matters
The default open model for thousands of companies, backed by one of the largest cloud providers in the world.
Key facts
Leader
Eddie Wu (Alibaba); Qwen led by Junyang Lin
FoundersAlibaba Cloud (Qwen team)
PeopleJunyang Lin (Qwen tech lead)
HQHangzhou, China
Latest modelQwen3.8-Max (Aug 3, 2026); Qwen3.8-Flash open weights (Aug 26, 2026)
Valuation noteAlibaba is public (BABA)
InvestorsAlibaba
WebsiteNearby on the leaderboard