Alibaba Group’s shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange surged over 8% on Thursday following the company’s unveiling of its artificial intelligence (AI) model, QwQ-32B.
The announcement coincided with the Chinese government’s renewed commitment to boosting AI and other emerging technologies, so as to enhance its competitiveness in the global tech race.
The QwQ-32B model, developed by Alibaba’s AI division, Qwen, is designed to rival some of the most powerful AI models available. Despite having 32 billion parameters, it reportedly delivers performance comparable to DeepSeek’s R1, a model with 671 billion parameters.
Qwen stated via X that QwQ-32B is great in mathematical reasoning, coding, and general problem-solving, placing it among top AI models like OpenAI’s o1 mini and DeepSeek’s R1.
The model is accessible through Qwen Chat, Alibaba’s AI-powered chatbot service, which allows users to choose from multiple AI options, including the latest Qwen2.5-Max, the most advanced model in the Qwen lineup.
In a move to encourage wider adoption and innovation, Alibaba has made QwQ-32B available as an open-source model on platforms such as Hugging Face and ModelScope under the Apache 2.0 license.
Government Backing and Market Response
Alibaba’s announcement followed a policy statement from the Chinese government pledging more support for industries such as AI, humanoid robots, and 6G telecommunications.
This shows China’s strategy to build an AI-driven economy that extends beyond research and into real-world applications.
“China is rapidly building an application-driven AI ecosystem that isn’t just about research — it’s about immediate, tangible economic impact,” said Sun Wei, principal AI analyst at Counterpoint Research.
Analysts believe these government-backed initiatives will accelerate AI adoption across industries, particularly in government agencies and smaller enterprises.
The market reacted positively to Alibaba’s latest AI development, with the company’s shares climbing to HK$140.5. The announcement also had a ripple effect on China’s tech stock index, which saw notable gains.
Alibaba’s AI Investment Strategy
Alibaba has committed to investing over 380 billion yuan ($52 billion) in AI infrastructure, including data centres, over the next three years.
This investment shows its ambition to remain a leader in the field while competing with other players in China’s AI space.
Meanwhile, DeepSeek’s R1 model, which uses a sparse mixture-of-experts (MoE) transformer approach, continues to attract attention. In activating only a fraction of its 671 billion parameters per task, it provides a cost-effective alternative to models requiring more computing power.
