Alibaba unveils its latest Qwen 2.5 AI model

Chinese technology firm Alibaba announced on Wednesday the launch of its latest Qwen 2.5 artificial intelligence model, asserting that it has surpassed the esteemed DeepSeek-V3.

The timing of the Qwen 2.5-Max's introduction, coinciding with the first day of the Lunar New Year—a period when many Chinese individuals are typically engaged with family—highlights the competitive pressure exerted by the rapid ascent of the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek over the past three weeks, affecting both international competitors and local firms.

According to a statement from Alibaba's cloud division shared on its official WeChat account, "Qwen 2.5-Max outperforms [...] nearly all competitors, including GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3, and Llama-3.1-405B," referencing the most advanced AI models from OpenAI and Meta.

The release of DeepSeek's AI assistant, utilizing the DeepSeek-V3 model on January 10, followed by the introduction of its R1 model on January 20, has sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley, resulting in a decline in tech stock values.

Read more: China's AI startup Deepseek takes global tech by storm

The reportedly low development and operational costs of the Chinese startup have led investors to reevaluate the substantial expenditure plans of major AI companies in the United States.

Moreover, DeepSeek's achievements have prompted a rush among its domestic rivals to enhance their AI offerings.

Just two days after the launch of DeepSeek-R1, ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, unveiled an update to its primary AI model, claiming it surpassed Microsoft-backed OpenAI's o1 in AIME, a benchmark that assesses AI models' comprehension and response to intricate instructions.