WEB DESK: Alibaba’s latest artificial intelligence model has been unveiled, marking a major milestone in the company’s technological progress.
The new model, named Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B, is built on Alibaba Cloud’s advanced Qwen3-Next architecture. It was released as open-source on Friday, giving developers worldwide free access to explore and use.
According to Alibaba’s Qwen team, this system offers ten times the performance of its predecessor while requiring just a fraction of the cost to train. The breakthrough highlights Alibaba’s growing influence in the AI sector.
With 80 billion parameters, the model is considered both powerful and efficient. Despite its complexity, it runs faster and more smoothly compared to earlier versions. In benchmark tests, it matched the performance of Alibaba’s larger Qwen3-235B-A22B model, which contains nearly three times more parameters.
A standout feature is its ability to operate on consumer-grade hardware. This makes it accessible not only to large companies but also to small startups, developers, and even hobbyists. By lowering costs and technical barriers, Alibaba’s innovation aims to expand AI adoption.
The model has been uploaded to GitHub and Hugging Face, allowing developers to test and build on it freely. A specialised version, Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking, has also been introduced. Reports suggest it even outperformed Google’s Gemini-2.5-Flash-Thinking in reasoning tasks.
Industry experts note that Alibaba’s open-source approach helps close the gap with US tech giants. By sharing its code, the company hopes to speed up innovation and grow a larger global ecosystem.
This launch follows other recent developments, including Qwen3 models optimised for Apple’s MLX framework. Analysts say Alibaba’s push into AI could reshape future applications by making advanced tools more affordable and widely available.
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