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Alibaba stock jumps 4.5% after launch of Qwen3.8-Max AI model boosts investor confidence
Alibaba stock climbed after the company launched its powerful Qwen3.8-Max AI model, boosting investor confidence with advanced features and open-source plans.
Alibaba's US-listed shares jumped around 4% to 4.5% in pre-market trading after the company launched its newest AI model, Qwen3.8-Max. This strong AI announcement made investors more confident about Alibaba's future growth.
Alibaba also gained about 7% on the Hong Kong stock exchange after the AI announcement. The rise in both the US and Hong Kong markets shows investors reacted positively.
The company called Qwen3.8-Max its "most powerful" AI model ever. Alibaba said it is the strongest model in its Qwen AI family so far. Qwen3.8-Max has 2.4 trillion parameters. Parameters are the internal settings that help an AI model learn, understand information, and generate answers. More parameters generally mean a more capable AI model.
Alibaba makes AI model open-source
Alibaba plans to make Qwen3.8-Max fully open-source next week. This means developers around the world will be able to download, modify, and build on the model instead of only using it through Alibaba's own platforms, according to Yahoo Finance.
The open-source strategy could attract more developers and businesses to Alibaba's AI ecosystem. Investors see this as a way for Alibaba to expand its influence in artificial intelligence.
What can the new AI model do?
The new AI model is designed to perform many advanced tasks. Alibaba said it delivers better performance in coding, research, long-running work, and multimodal tasks that combine text and images. Qwen3.8-Max can understand both text and images.
This makes it a multimodal AI model that can work across different types of information. The AI model supports a context window of up to 1 million tokens. This allows it to understand and work with thousands of pages of information at one time.
AI can handle real work
Alibaba said the model can handle real-life work instead of only answering simple questions. It can help with coding, research, workplace tasks, and visual intelligence.
According to Alibaba, Qwen3.8-Max can write code with very little human help for long periods. In one internal test, it spent 16 days building and improving an AI coding tool by writing code, testing it, fixing mistakes, and improving its work on its own.
Alibaba said the model can also perform professional tasks. These include reviewing legal documents, carrying out financial research, and creating architectural 3D models, as noted by CNBC. The model also has advanced visual intelligence. Alibaba said it can understand hundreds of pages of documents, TV series, or even 100-hour livestreams and turn them into searchable knowledge hubs.
How Qwen3.8-Max compares
Alibaba's benchmark results show the model is highly competitive globally. The company said Qwen3.8-Max delivers scores that are similar to, or sometimes better than, Anthropic's Fable 5 model. On the Text Arena leaderboard, Qwen3.8-Max ranks fifth. The rankings compare AI models on tasks such as mathematics, coding, and creative writing.
On the Vision Arena leaderboard, Qwen3.8-Max ranks second. The rankings measure how well AI models understand and reason using images. Alibaba compiled these rankings. The launch comes as Chinese AI companies are racing to compete with US AI leaders. China is investing heavily in advanced AI as competition with the United States grows.
Why investors are excited
Alibaba is also facing strong competition from Chinese startup Moonshot AI. Earlier this month, Moonshot launched Kimi K3, which has 2.8 trillion parameters, making it China's largest AI model by parameter count.
Despite competition, Alibaba continues to invest heavily in AI and cloud computing. The company has made these businesses the center of its future growth strategy, according to Yahoo Finance.
Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu has already said AI will drive the company's next phase of growth. Earlier this year, he said AI-related products would become the biggest source of revenue growth for Alibaba's cloud business.
Investors believe the powerful new AI model strengthens Alibaba's position in the fast-growing AI industry. The announcement increased optimism that AI and cloud services could help the company grow faster in the coming years.
