Qwen

Qwen is the AI model family Alibaba trains itself. It's been released since 2023, and the lineup spans far beyond text-writing models — it includes models that read images, write code, and even generate video.

There are two things worth separating when looking at Qwen. One is "models Alibaba builds," and the other is "models Alibaba Cloud sells." Alibaba Cloud's shelf also carries other companies' models, like DeepSeek and Moonshot. Being on the shelf doesn't mean Alibaba built it.

Another common misunderstanding is that "all Qwen models are open." Some can be downloaded by anyone, but the largest models are sometimes locked to cloud-only access. Even under the same Qwen name, the terms differ.

As of August 2026, the latest generation is Qwen3.8. The largest, "Max," weighs in at around 2.4 trillion parameters and is sold cloud-only, while the mid-size 27B model was released in full under Apache 2.0 and shot to the top of Hugging Face's popularity rankings. "Lock up the biggest, open up the middle" — you can see this company's release strategy play out within a single generation. Beyond text models, Alibaba has even released a music model that turns text into finished songs.

"Alibaba Cloud supports the DeepSeek model" — this doesn't mean Alibaba built DeepSeek. It just means Alibaba put someone else's model on its own shelf.