Alibaba Group launched Qwen3.8-MAX, its latest flagship multimodal AI model. The company's Hong Kong-listed shares rose 6% following the announcement. The new model features 2.4 trillion parameters.
Qwen3.8-MAX shows improved performance in reasoning, coding, and multimodal understanding. Alibaba claims the model is competitive with top-tier U.S. systems from OpenAI and Anthropic. The release intensifies competition with domestic rivals Baidu, Tencent, and Moonshot AI.
This launch follows the release of the 2.8 trillion-parameter Kimi K3 model by Moonshot AI. Alibaba currently holds a significant stake in Moonshot AI. Alibaba will release the open weights for Qwen3.8-Max next week. The company will also release a smaller 27-billion parameter version. This move shifts Alibaba's strategy as previous Max-tier models remained proprietary.