Alibaba Group’s stock soared 4% on Monday after the Chinese tech giant unveiled its most advanced artificial intelligence model ever – the Qwen-3-Max-Preview, featuring over 1 trillion parameters and challenging OpenAI and Google in the global AI race.
Breaking New Ground with Trillion-Parameter AI
The Qwen-3-Max-Preview represents a massive leap forward for Alibaba’s AI capabilities. With more than 1 trillion parameters, this text-only model is the largest system the company has ever built and significantly outperforms its previous flagship model, the Qwen3-235B-A22B.
Parameters are like the “brain cells” of AI systems – the more parameters a model has, the smarter and more capable it becomes. To put this in perspective, Alibaba’s new model is roughly 4 times larger than their previous best AI system.
The model launched on Friday, September 6, 2025, and is available through Alibaba Cloud and the OpenRouter marketplace for large language models. Unlike many AI models that are freely available, this advanced version requires paid access to control its usage.
Stock Market Celebrates AI Breakthrough
Investors showed strong confidence in Alibaba’s AI strategy, pushing shares up nearly 4% in early trading on both Hong Kong and U.S. markets. The stock jumped to HK$140.60 ($18.05) on the Hong Kong Exchange, with retail investor message volumes on trading platforms increasing by 400%.
Alibaba’s shares have been on a remarkable run this year, gaining 65% in 2025 and jumping over 71% in the past 12 months. The company’s successful AI launches have been a major driver of this impressive performance.
Market analysts highlighted that Alibaba’s cloud computing and e-commerce segments are showing strong fundamentals, while the company’s push into artificial intelligence positions it as China’s leading AI provider.
Competing with Global AI Giants
The Qwen-3-Max-Preview puts Alibaba in direct competition with the world’s biggest AI companies. Internal testing shows the model performs better than many existing systems, though these results haven’t been independently verified yet.
Alibaba is pricing the advanced model at $0.90 per million input words and $3.40 per million output words, reflecting its premium capabilities compared to smaller AI models.
The company has committed to investing $52 billion in AI infrastructure over the next three years, showing its serious commitment to becoming a global AI leader. This massive investment will fund new model development, cloud services, and AI research.
Also Read: SoftBank CEO Says Forget AGI – Super Smart AI Will Arrive in Just 10 Years
Building China’s AI Independence
Beyond just creating powerful AI, Alibaba’s breakthrough helps reduce China’s dependence on American AI technology. The company recently unveiled its own AI chips to compete with Nvidia, aligning with Beijing’s goals for technology self-sufficiency amid ongoing trade tensions.
The Qwen series has already become hugely popular worldwide, with over 20 million downloads making Alibaba the top player in the global open-source AI ecosystem. This success proves that Chinese companies can create AI systems that compete with the best American technology.
Bullish investors are now predicting Alibaba’s stock could hit $150 by the end of this week, as the company continues flexing its AI muscles in the rapidly growing artificial intelligence market.
