Qwen

Alibaba launched its first smart‑glasses, the Quark AI Glasses, in two models (S1 at ¥3,799 and G1 at ¥1,899). Integrated with Alibaba’s Qwen large‑language model and the new Qwen app, they offer voice‑activated translation, real‑time meeting transcription, product price lookup on Taobao, and AR visual recognition. The S1 features a higher‑resolution display. Alibaba aims to expand its consumer‑AI ecosystem, betting on rapid growth in AR wearables—projected to exceed 10 million shipments by 2026—while facing price, battery and supply‑chain challenges.

Research suggesting Huawei’s Pangu large model shares significant parameter similarity with Alibaba’s Qwen, sparking plagiarism allegations. Huawei’s Pangu team denies this, citing different training hardware and adherence to open-source licenses for shared components. While some code within Pangu bears Qwen’s copyright, it’s attributed to proper utilization of open-source licenses rather than outright plagiarism. The original research report has been removed pending peer review.

Alibaba is undergoing a significant strategic shift towards AI, spurred by internal reflections on past missteps and the rise of competitors. Executives, including Joe Tsai, admitted to overexpansion and are now laser-focused on AI and cloud infrastructure to regain dominance. This triggered rapid development of the Qwen series, now a top-ranked open-source model, and a massive investment of over 380 billion yuan in AI infrastructure. The company aims to democratize AI through open-sourcing Qwen.