Alibaba Cloud has reached a major milestone in open source artificial intelligence as its Qwen AI models surpassed 700 million cumulative downloads on Hugging Face. The figure reflects usage recorded up to January and highlights the rapid adoption of the models across global developer communities.
The Qwen family, developed by Alibaba Cloud, showed exceptional momentum in December. During that month alone, downloads exceeded the combined total of the next eight most downloaded AI models on Hugging Face. This level of demand points to strong trust in Qwen’s performance and flexibility.
Qwen’s rapid rise is also sharpening comparisons with established AI systems as developers weigh performance, openness and real world deployment. Ongoing evaluations of Qwen vs ChatGPT help explain why Alibaba’s open source models are gaining momentum across global developer communities.
Investor sentiment responded quickly. Shares of Alibaba Group jumped nearly 10 percent in a single trading session, as markets interpreted the surge as proof of Alibaba’s growing competitiveness in open source AI.
Key Drivers Behind Qwen’s Growth:
- Broad adoption by developers and enterprises
- Integration into Alibaba’s internal AI products and cloud services
- Open-source availability that accelerates experimentation and deployment
Alibaba continues to position AI and cloud computing as long term growth engines, with Qwen models serving as a core pillar of its foundation model strategy.
