Alibaba's artificial intelligence (AI) model, Qwen, has achieved the top position in global open-source AI model downloads.
According to Bloomberg on August 18, Alibaba recently announced that the cumulative global downloads of its Qwen series of open-source AI models have surpassed 3 billion in the past six months. The company has released 460 different types of Qwen models as open-weight models, with over 300,000 derivative models created based on them.
Open-weight models allow developers to download the model's weights and modify or enhance them for their own use or as a foundation for new AI services. Therefore, the number of downloads and derivative models serves as an indicator of which AI models developers worldwide are actively utilizing.
A report released by the global open-source AI platform Hugging Face on August 14 revealed that the cumulative downloads of Google’s AI models this year reached 418 million, while Meta’s AI models totaled 227 million. Qwen's download count is approximately 7.2 times that of Google and about 13.2 times that of Meta.
Notably, the creation of over 300,000 derivative models within the Qwen ecosystem highlights that developers around the world are building their own AI models based on Qwen, indicating a rapidly growing ecosystem. Hugging Face noted, “When developers decide which AI model to use, Qwen has effectively become one of the 'default options.'”
Alibaba is attracting developers into its ecosystem by offering open models that are both affordable and high-performing. Additionally, the company is integrating its cloud services to provide offerings to corporate clients in regions such as Southeast Asia and Africa.
Previously, among U.S. open-source AI models, Meta's Llama had a strong influence in the global developer market. However, recently, the adoption of Chinese AI models, including those from Alibaba, DeepSeek, Kimi from Moonshot AI, and MiniMax, by overseas developers has been rapidly increasing.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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