Alibaba preparing for flagship AI model release as soon as April

[NEW YORK] Alibaba Group Holding is planning to release Qwen 3, an upgraded version of its flagship artificial intelligence (AI) model, as soon as this month with competition from rivals including OpenAI and DeepSeek heating up.

The Hangzhou-based company’s new offering may arrive later in April, though the exact timing could still slip, a source familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified because the information is not public. The Chinese media outlet Huxiu earlier reported about Alibaba’s plans.

Alibaba has been releasing AI products at a frenetic pace since going all-in on the technology this year. The e-commerce and cloud computing leader in China came out with a new model in its Qwen 2.5 series just a week ago that can process text, pictures, audio and video – and is efficient enough to run directly on mobile phones and laptops. Last month, it also unveiled a new version of the AI assistant Quark app.

Since Alibaba’s Hangzhou peer DeepSeek upstaged OpenAI with a powerful model that purportedly cost just several million US dollars to build, China’s tech leaders have flooded the market with a rapid succession of low-cost AI services. The wave of new models out of Asia are threatening to undercut premium US offerings from the likes of OpenAI, Alphabet’s Google and Microsoft.

OpenAI, Google and Anthropic have similarly released a flurry of new models in recent weeks. OpenAI recently said it also plans to release a more “open” model that mimics human reasoning in the coming months, a shift in strategy after DeepSeek and Alibaba pushed out open-source AI systems. BLOOMBERG