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Alibaba Shifts to Proprietary AI for Profit
2 Apr
Summary
- Alibaba launched its third AI model, Qwen3.6-Plus, focusing on proprietary services.
- New models are closed-source, contrasting with competitors' open-source approaches.
- This move aims to monetize AI efforts due to e-commerce business competition.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is intensifying its focus on generating revenue from its artificial intelligence services, recently releasing its third proprietary AI model in quick succession. The company unveiled the agentic AI-focused Qwen3.6-Plus on Thursday. This follows closely behind upgrades to its image-generation platform and a multimodal model capable of processing text, voice, and images.
These new offerings are closed-source, a departure from the open-source approach favored by many Chinese AI developers. While Alibaba has historically released open-source models, this strategic pivot to proprietary versions allows for more direct control and monetization. This shift is partly driven by the need to counter weakness in Alibaba's core e-commerce business, which is experiencing fierce domestic competition.
In March, Alibaba launched Wukong, an agentic AI service for its corporate clients, and concurrently increased prices for its cloud and storage services by up to 34%. The newly released Qwen3.6-Plus model is slated for integration with Wukong and other agentic AI services, further consolidating Alibaba's AI portfolio for commercial application.
