Alibaba Launches Qwen3.8-Max to Revive AI Edge

Alibaba Group is making AI and cloud computing central to its attempt to restore growth and strengthen its e-commerce ecosystem, including Taobao and Tmall. The company pledged in February 2025 to invest at least 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) in AI and cloud infrastructure over three years, more than it spent in those areas during the previous decade. The strategy pits Alibaba against Chinese developers such as DeepSeek and Moonshot AI as well as US leaders including Anthropic and OpenAI.

Alibaba formally released Qwen3.8-Max on Aug. 3, 2026, describing the mixture-of-experts model as its most capable system to date. It has 2.4 trillion parameters and can process text, images, video and documents. Alibaba said the model ranked behind only Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 in its evaluations and planned to release open weights the following week. The announcement lifted Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares as much as 5.6% on Monday, with the stock trading at HK$118.40 around midday.