E-commerce giant Alibaba has been one of the most influential companies in the 21st century. With every new trend that has emerged since its inception, be it in technology or business, Alibaba welcomes major developments in their business to stay afloat. One such idea was launching their own AI model, Qwen. In April 2023, the company made a big announcement that Alibaba too would take part in the AI gold rush with the advent of their AI.
Powered by Alibaba Cloud, Qwen is an AI assistant programmed to simplify every kind of task that a user might have, ranging from deep research to web development. On November 24, the company declared that their Qwen App crossed the 10 million-mark in terms of downloads within its first week. This is accompanied by 5% increase in revenue year-over-year for Alibaba’s September quarter.
Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu isn’t worried about AI bubble
On Tuesday, Alibaba hosted its second-quarter earnings call. There, the company’s CEO, Eddie Wu, expressed his confidence regarding the need to not worry about the AI bubble. As per a report by Business Insider, the chief executive went on to say that he “doesn’t really see much of an issue in terms of a so-called AI bubble.”
Sharing a similar opinion like NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang regarding the phenomenon, Wu further expressed the high demand for AI tools in the near future. Throwing light on the company’s unpreparedness as far as the servers are concerned, he said, “We’re not even able to keep pace with the growth in customer demand.” In this context, the Alibaba CEO added, “In the next three years to come, AI resources will continue to be under supply.”
Both Huang and Wu have been vocal about this matter. Anticipating a sharp increase in the demand for AI tools and models in the future has made both companies prepare themselves by boosting their workforce, relying on automation and investments in AI technology. In fact, Eddie Wu aims to invest “aggressively” in AI infrastructure in the next three years in order to meet future demands.
Related: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang Doesn’t Believe in AI Bubble, Company Shares Hint Otherwise
Alibaba stays in the AI race with Qwen
Alibaba’s success in the September quarter of the fiscal 2025 has been mostly driven by their cloud services. The company’s cloud division went up 34% to 39.8 billion yuan. As per the Business Insider report, the cloud business was pushed forth by “public cloud revenue growth, including the increasing adoption of AI-related products.” One of Alibaba Cloud’s biggest accomplishments, however, has been the success of Qwen AI.
What made Qwen a pathbreaking business idea was the consumer-centric approach towards the cocnept of AI utility. Qwen is capable of dominating the open source space mainly for the small size of the AI models.
In fact, most of the Qwen AI models can run on consumer grade hardware, which mostly includes one graphics card and VRAM size of under 16 gigabytes. Given its high performance, experts believe the Alibaba product has potential to go head to head with the likes of DeepSeek as well as Claude AI.
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