According to a report by China Daily on March 6…
Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group is stepping up investment and leadership focus on its Qwen large language model (LLM) following the departure of a key technical leader, as competition in China’s AI application market intensifies.
In an internal memo, CEO Eddie Wu confirmed that Alibaba Cloud CTO Zhou Jingren will continue leading the company’s Tongyi Lab, while a new foundation model support group will coordinate company-wide resources to advance large-model development.
“The Qwen model is a cornerstone of Alibaba’s long-term AI strategy,” the company said, emphasizing adherence to its open-source approach and continued investment in research and talent acquisition. Alibaba dismissed speculation that the recent departures were linked to commercialization pressure, noting that its foundation model team is not evaluated on metrics such as daily active users.
The personnel changes follow the resignation of Lin Junyang, a core developer of the Qwen3-Max model with more than 1 trillion parameters, and Yu Bowen, who led post-training work. Lin, one of Alibaba’s youngest P10-level technical leaders, has been instrumental in developing both large and smaller-scale Qwen3.5 models.
Intensifying Market Competition
Qwen faces stiff competition from other Chinese tech companies. Data from analytics firm QuestMobile show that during this year’s Spring Festival holiday, daily active users peaked at 145 million for ByteDance’s Doubao, 73.5 million for Qwen, and 40.5 million for Tencent’s Yuanbao.
To capture user attention, major players have launched aggressive campaigns: Tencent offered 1 billion yuan ($145 million) in digital red packets, Baidu invested 500 million yuan in AI-enhanced search applications, and Doubao partnered with the national Spring Festival Gala. Alibaba similarly rolled out a 3 billion yuan “Spring Festival Treat” program to integrate Qwen’s AI applications with consumer transactions.
Cao Lei, a member of the China Advertising Association, noted that the AI “red packet war” could mark a turning point in China’s digital ecosystem. “Much like mobile internet-era red packets reshaped payments, AI-era incentives could influence digital traffic distribution for the next decade,” Cao said.
Leadership Signals Commitment
Founder Jack Ma has made rare public appearances in recent weeks, visiting the Qwen project team and local schools in Hangzhou to underline the company’s strategic focus on AI and its societal implications.
“Education needs to respond swiftly to help children coexist with AI and adapt to this enormous transformation,” Ma told students during a school visit.