Alibaba has launched its most powerful Artificial Intelligence language model to date, Qwen3-Max, as the Chinese e-commerce giant accelerates its shift towards AI as a central pillar of its business.
Announced on Wednesday at the company’s annual conference, the new model contains more than one trillion parameters, variables that shape how AI systems process information, and shows particular strength in code generation and autonomous agent capabilities, according to Zhou Jingren, chief technology officer at Alibaba Cloud.
These autonomous functions mean the system can act more independently than traditional chatbots such as ChatGPT, requiring fewer prompts and taking action on tasks towards a user’s goal.
Alibaba said third-party benchmarks, including Tau2-Bench, showed Qwen3-Max outperforming rival models such as Anthropic’s Claude and DeepSeek-V3.1 in certain areas.
The company has been prioritising AI alongside its core e-commerce operations. Earlier this year, Alibaba announced plans to invest 380 billion yuan ($53.40 billion) over the next three years in AI infrastructure as competition among Chinese tech firms intensifies.
During the event, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said the company would increase its spending even further, though he did not disclose figures. “The speed of AI industry development has far exceeded our expectations, and the industry’s demand for AI infrastructure has also far exceeded our expectations,” he said.
Alibaba previously released the Qwen3 model in April. It also revealed new products including Qwen3-Omni, a multimodal system designed for virtual and augmented reality uses such as smart glasses and intelligent cockpits.
