Qwen3.5 is 60pc cheaper to use and eight times better at processing large workloads than its predecessor, the company said.
Alibaba has unveiled its latest AI model, Qwen3.5, as newer launches from Chinese companies catch up to their US counterparts in the race for AI dominance.
The first open weight model in the Qwen3.5 series demonstrates “outstanding results across a full range” of benchmarks, the company said. It ranks higher than OpenAI’s GPT-5.2, Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5 and Google’s Gemini 3 Pro in several of the tests.
The model is built on a hybrid architecture that allows only 17bn parameters to activate per forward pass, while comprising a total of 397bn parameters. This, Alibaba said, optimises speed without sacrificing its capability.
According to the company, Qwen3.5 is 60pc cheaper to use and eight times better at processing large workloads than its immediate predecessor. The new model comes with “visual agentic capabilities”, Alibaba said – the ability to take actions across phone and computer apps.
