Alibaba joins AI race with Qwen 2.5-Max

Chinese tech giant Alibaba has entered the artificial intelligence (AI) race with the launch of its latest model, Qwen 2.5-Max, claiming it outperforms not only domestic rivals but also major players like OpenAI and Meta.

This move comes as Chinese AI models, particularly DeepSeek, continue to shake up the U.S. market, triggering concerns over competition, data security, and potential intellectual property theft.

Alibaba’s cloud division introduced Qwen 2.5-Max, asserting its superiority over DeepSeek-V3, GPT-4, and Llama 3.1-405B.

The announcement, strategically timed on the first day of the Lunar New Year, underscores the increasing competition within China’s AI sector following DeepSeek’s meteoric rise.

DeepSeek’s success has already forced major price reductions in China’s AI industry. Its earlier model, DeepSeek-V2, disrupted the market by offering token processing for only 1 yuan ($0.14) per million tokens, prompting Alibaba Cloud to slash its AI pricing by 97 percent. Other firms, including ByteDance, Baidu, and Tencent, have also scrambled to upgrade their AI models to stay competitive.

However, DeepSeek’s rapid ascent has also sent shockwaves through the U.S. tech industry. OpenAI and Microsoft are currently investigating whether DeepSeek improperly integrated OpenAI’s models into its own system. David Sacks, President Donald Trump’s newly appointed AI czar, acknowledged that intellectual property theft “is possible.”

Chinese AI's Rise

The rise of Chinese AI models has already had major financial consequences for American tech giants. The launch of DeepSeek-R1 contributed to a market crash that saw Nvidia’s stock plummet 17 percent, wiping out $600 billion in value — the biggest single-day loss for any stock in history. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, also saw its shares fall by 4.03 percent, while Microsoft’s declined by 2.14 percent.

Unlike OpenAI, which has relied on vast computing power and funding, DeepSeek reportedly spent under $6 million on training its latest model. While this efficiency is impressive, it raises questions about how the company achieved such performance with limited resources. Amid this rapid rise, concerns over privacy and data security continue to loom large.

Alibaba’s entry into the AI race only adds to the intensifying global competition. With DeepSeek already making waves in Silicon Valley and causing financial disruptions, Alibaba’s Qwen 2.5-Max marks yet another bold step forward in China’s growing AI ambitions.