The low-cost, open-weight model and others from China give enterprises more choices, given the performance claims of some Chinese model providers.
July 21, 2026
Chinese tech giant Alibaba’s new AI model shows that enterprises will likely continue to be attracted to Chinese AI models that are not only nearly as capable as but also far cheaper than frontier models from U.S. providers.
Alibaba previewed its new flagship model Qwen 3.8 Max on July 19. The model boasts 2.4 trillion parameters, and the Chinese vendor claims that it ranks just behind Anthropic’s Fable 5 in performance. While the model is currently available to test on Alibaba’s Qoder platform, the vendor said it will release the weights soon.
Qwen 3.8 Max was introduced a few days after Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI launched Kimi K3, its open-weight model with 2.8 trillion parameters.
