Alibaba unveils Qwen3.8, claims it's 'second only to Fable 5'

The reveal of Qwen3.8 comes just days after Moonshot AI set the record for the largest open-weight AI model yet.

Alibaba shares surged more than 3.5pc in overnight trading on Monday (20 July) after the Chinese giant unveiled Qwen3.8-Max in preview – supposedly “second only to [Anthropic’s] Fable 5”.

With 2.4trn parameters, this latest AI model in Alibaba’s flagship series Qwen is expected to go open weight (where the trained parameters are publicly available) soon. It is available to try out on Alibaba’s Token Plan, Qoder and QoderWork.

The reveal of Qwen3.8 comes just days after Alibaba’s Chinese contemporary Moonshot AI made a splash unveiling Kimi K3, which set the record for the largest open-weight AI model yet with 2.8trn parameters.

Interest in the model surged much higher than expected following its launch, as new users swarmed to try the model – forcing Moonshot to pause on taking new subscriptions on Sunday (19 July).