Alibaba's AI model Qwen3.8-Max widely accessible ahead of open-weights release

Advertisement Alibaba Tech Tech Trends Alibaba’s AI model Qwen3.8-Max made widely accessible ahead of open-weights release Flagship 2.4 trillion parameter model highlights native multimodal capabilities and the ability to carry out long-horizon agentic tasks 2 -MIN READ 2 -MIN Listen Wency Chen in Shanghai Published: 11:01am, 3 Aug 2026 Updated: 6:00pm, 3 Aug 2026 Alibaba Group Holding has made its next-generation flagship artificial intelligence model Qwen3.8-Max widely accessible to global users ahead of an open-weights release next week. The move marks Alibaba’s return to open-sourcing its top-tier AI models after keeping several recent flagship releases proprietary earlier this year. It also signals the firm’s entry into a recent round of powerful releases by Chinese developers aggressively narrowing the gap with leading US labs . The massive 2.4-trillion-parameter model supports a context window of up to 1 million tokens, meaning the model can process up to 750,000 words or their equivalent for each query. It is available to global developers via Alibaba Cloud’s Model Studio application programming interfaces (APIs), as well as through QwenWork , the company’s workplace AI agent platform, Alibaba announced on Monday. The company’s Hong Kong-listed shares rose 7 per cent following the release, closing at HK$125.20 the same day. QwenWork, which entered public beta on the same day through web and desktop apps, is an all-in-one productivity platform for individuals and businesses, targeting Tencent’s WorkBuddy, Moonshot AI’s Kimi Work and overseas rivals including Claude Cowork and ChatGPT Work. A multimodal foundation model, Qwen3.8-Max can process various types of data from lengthy documents to television series and live streams to build searchable knowledge bases, according to Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post. The company also said the model could recreate software applications from screenshots, generate interactive games and educational animations, and convert two-dimensional floor plans into 3D visualisations. Advertisement Select Voice Select Speed 0.8x 0.9x 1.0x 1.1x 1.2x 1.5x 1.75x 00:00 00:00 1.00 x