Alibaba previews Qwen3.8-Max flagship model days after Moonshot AI Kimi K3 launch
Alibaba $BABA previewed its flagship Qwen3.8-Max model on July 19, days after Moonshot AI's 2.8-trillion-parameter open-weight Kimi K3 launch. Qwen3.8-Max has 2.4 trillion parameters and rolls out via API this week, with an open-weight download to follow.
Alibaba previewed its new flagship AI model, Qwen3.8-Max, on July 19, just days after Chinese rival Moonshot AI launched its 2.8-trillion-parameter open-weight Kimi K3 model, according to multiple reports. Qwen3.8-Max has 2.4 trillion parameters, making it Alibaba's largest model to date, and the company is rolling it out via API this week, with a downloadable open-weight version to follow next week. The two launches landing within days of each other shows Chinese AI developers are now iterating on frontier-scale open models faster than outside researchers can fully benchmark them, a pace that is intensifying competitive pressure on both domestic rivals and on Western labs like Anthropic and OpenAI that have leaned on proprietary, closed models.