Alibaba has launched its latest AI models, called Qwen3.5, as competition in China’s AI industry continues to grow. The new models are available in two versions. The open-weight version can be downloaded and used on people’s own computers or servers. Alibaba has also released a hosted version that runs on its own cloud servers.
Alibaba says Qwen3.5 is faster, cheaper, and more powerful than earlier models. It can understand text, images and videos in one system. The model also has better coding and AI agent abilities. AI agents are tools that can perform tasks on their own, such as writing code, searching for information, or completing several steps for a user.
They said its new open-weight model has 397 billion parameters. The company also claimed that Qwen3.5 performed as well as some leading AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. However, these results were based on Alibaba’s own tests and have not been independently confirmed. The new models can understand 201 languages and dialects, compared with 82 in the previous version. This shows Alibaba’s plans to expand its AI technology around the world.
Alibaba’s launch comes as other Chinese companies, including ByteDance and Zhipu AI, are also releasing stronger AI models with better agent features. The company is expected to launch more open-weight AI models during the Chinese New Year period.
