China

Alibaba Unveils Qwen3.8-Max AI Model

Is Alibaba's Qwen3-Max a genuine leap closing the AI gap with the U.S. or overhyped progress built on shaky foundations?

Published 9 hours ago

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Above: A Qwen logo with an Alibaba.com logo in the background on May 13. Image credit: Avishek Das/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

The Spin

Pro-China narrative

Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Max is a massive leap forward that proves China is closing in fast on American AI dominance, matching or beating Anthropic's Fable 5 on key benchmarks. Open-weight releases like this one are reshaping global AI competition in ways that U.S. labs simply can't ignore, as Chinese firms are able to provide large amounts of computing power to users cheaply. The West ignores Chinese AI at its peril.

Verge Foreign Policy

Anti-China narrative

Alibaba's flashy Qwen3.8-Max launch deserves serious skepticism — benchmark results fall short of the company's own prior claims, and the hype outpaces the reality. Chinese firms have also faced scrutiny over smuggling banned AI chips and potentially distilling models from American IP. Letting inflated announcements drive policy decisions would be a mistake when the underlying integrity of these models remains so questionable.

Nikkei Asia TechCrunch