Alibaba’s New AI Model Boosts Shares
Hong Kong CNN — Alibaba, the Chinese technology powerhouse, has revealed its latest artificial intelligence reasoning model, QwQ-32B. This announcement led to an 8% increase in the company’s Hong Kong-listed shares and contributed to gains in the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index.
Alibaba’s new model reportedly surpasses rival models from OpenAI and DeepSeek, according to an online statement. QwQ-32B, as per the company, delivers “exceptional performance, almost entirely surpassing OpenAI-o1-mini and rivaling the strongest open-source reasoning model, DeepSeek-R1.” OpenAI-o1-mini is the American company’s cost-efficient reasoning model released last year. Alibaba further stated that QwQ-32B has achieved a “qualitative leap in mathematics, coding, and general capabilities, with overall performance on par with DeepSeek R1.”
The company emphasized that its model, utilizing 32 billion parameters, is more efficient to train than DeepSeek’s R1, which utilizes 671 billion parameters. DeepSeek’s high-performing model R1, which significantly decreased costs compared to Western rivals, impressed the industry when it was first released in January.
The launch of Alibaba’s new AI model follows the recent introduction of Manus, a “general AI agent” developed by another company. According to a video, Manus is able to handle intricate, multi-step duties such as screening resumes and creating websites. Reuters reports that Manus was developed by the Chinese firm Monica. The video further states that the AI agent is more advanced than a chatbot since it offers tangible results, like producing a report recommending specific properties to buy.
Alibaba, the parent company of the e-commerce platforms Taobao and Tmall, initially launched its ChatGPT-equivalent service, Tongyi Qianwen, in 2023, shortly after OpenAI released its industry-defining reasoning model. Earlier this year, Alibaba released another model, Qwen 2.5 Max, which it asserted outperformed DeepSeek’s V3 model. In a separate move last week, Alibaba announced a commitment to invest at least 380 billion yuan ($52.4 billion) in its AI and cloud computing infrastructure over the next three years.
This pledge follows Chinese leaders’ recent commitment to supporting “emerging industries and industries of the future,” including increased funding for AI, humanoid robots, and quantum technology.
Anna Cooban in London contributed to this article.
