Alibaba unveils Qwen3 AI models that it says outperform DeepSeek R1
The Qwen3 family consists of eight models, ranging from 600 million parameters to 235 billion, with enhancements across all models, according to the Qwen team at Alibaba's cloud computing unit. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
In AI, parameters are a measurement of the variables present during model training. They serve as an indicator of sophistication: larger parameter sizes typically suggest greater capacity.
Benchmark tests cited by Alibaba revealed that models such as Qwen3-235B and Qwen3-4B matched or exceeded the performance of advanced models from both domestic and overseas competitors – including OpenAI's o1, Google's Gemini and DeepSeek's R1 – in areas like instruction following, coding assistance, text generation, mathematical skills and complex problem solving.
11:13
How Alibaba.com is betting on AI to transform e-commerce
How Alibaba.com is betting on AI to transform e-commerce
The launch of Qwen3, which was anticipated this month as
previously reported by the Post , is expected to solidify Alibaba's position as a leading provider of open-source models. With over 100,000 derivative models built upon it, Qwen is currently the world's largest open-source AI ecosystem, surpassing Facebook parent Meta Platforms' Llama community.
Advertisement
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
South China Morning Post
a day ago
- South China Morning Post
Alibaba, Ant combine forces to take on Meituan in China's instant commerce market
Alibaba Group Holding and its fintech affiliate Ant Group, both co-founded by Jack Ma, have joined forces to create an army of delivery service workers to defeat Meituan in the instant commerce market. A total of 22 businesses operated by Alibaba and Ant, including domestic online marketplaces Taobao and Tmall, Ant's Alipay payment service and Alibaba Cloud, have pledged to improve the conditions of millions of delivery riders. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. Alibaba's move to pool resources from different units – which also include food delivery service fresh food store Freshippo and online travel booking site Fliggy – is being promoted as a public welfare campaign, but it marks the first time since 2020 that all of the group's key brands are on the same page. Alibaba has walked back from an earlier plan to spin off its sprawling business empire into independent entities. Late last year, the company merged its domestic and overseas e-commerce operations into one unit under newly appointed CEO Jiang Fan. This month, Alibaba rolled out a new membership programme spanning a range of services, from online marketplaces and food delivery to travel bookings. According to a statement from Taobao on Monday, Alibaba's delivery riders would be equipped with a new orange uniform in the style of a racing suit. The company pledged to provide better welfare coverage for its riders and set up special funds to support the education and healthcare needs of riders and their family members.
RTHK
a day ago
- RTHK
Solar Project trip sheds light on AI uses for students
Solar Project trip sheds light on AI uses for students Angelina Kwan presents a souvenir to a representative of the BrainCo startup during the visit. Photo: RTHK Director of Broadcasting Angelina Kwan on Tuesday led students taking part in RTHK's Solar Project on an artificial intelligence tour that included a stop at Alibaba's headquarters in Hangzhou. The project is part of the broadcaster's annual summer programme. The delegation, which includes some 100 students, went to the Alibaba office to learn more about how the conglomerate uses AI. Participants said finding out more about the firm's use of computer chips helped pique a higher level of interest in them to learn more about technological developments. They also went to the office of a tech startup BrainCo, where they were shown how a handicapped person found the firm's artificial limb to be better than the ones that he used in the past. The delegation also paid a visit to the Hangzhou Future Science Town to learn more about the city's developments in areas such as AI and smart city.
South China Morning Post
2 days ago
- South China Morning Post
Alibaba's AI coding model Qwen 3 Coder soars in popularity, challenging Claude Sonnet 4
Alibaba Group Holding's artificial intelligence coding model Qwen 3 Coder has been gaining popularity globally amid intensified competition in the AI-assisted coding sector, according to data from a third-party agency. Advertisement The model's usage share on AI marketplace OpenRouter soared to more than 20 per cent as of mid-August, trailing only Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4 with 31 per cent of usage. Alibaba's Qwen team released the Qwen 3 Coder on July 23, claiming it delivers top-tier AI coding performance on par with Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4, citing various third-party benchmark tests. Claude Sonnet 4 is widely regarded as the industry's leading coding model. Alibaba owns the Post. Qwen 3 Coder's performance boost was due to expanded data sets that include a high portion of coding-related data for training, improved overall data quality and the use of large-scale reinforcement learning, according to the Qwen team. Alibaba's coding tool launched at a time when the AI-assisted coding sector was becoming increasingly crowded with more players entering the space. Advertisement A slew of Chinese tech majors – from ByteDance to Tencent Holdings and Baidu – have all released AI coding tools to ride on the so-called vibe coding wave, which is the trend of using AI to help generate, complete and debug code.
