Alibaba Group previewed its new artificial-intelligence model that it says is second only to Anthropic’s Fable 5, the latest sign that China is fast closing the gap with the U.S. for global technological dominance.
The preview version of the Qwen3.8 Max, the company’s latest flagship large language model, boasts 2.4 trillion parameters, and is available on Alibaba’s coding platforms, the Hangzhou-based company said in a post on X.
Alibaba describes the new model as among the most powerful available today, comparable to leading frontier AI models and second only to Fable 5, Anthropic’s flagship Mythos-class model.
It plans to make the model open-weight soon, meaning it will be available for developers to download and modify.
The Sunday preview release came days after China’s Moonshot launched its Kimi K3 model, surprising many in Silicon Valley with its advanced capabilities. The Kimi K3 model has 2.8 trillion parameters dictating its decision-making and is the world’s biggest open-source model, according to the Beijing-based AI startup. Kimi K3’s performance surpassed another recent model launched by Beijing-based Z.AI, the GLM-5.2, across major benchmarks.
AI system parameters work like brain cells: The more a model has, the more knowledge it can store, making the count a shorthand for a model’s capabilities.
On Monday, Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed stock rose as much as 5.6% before paring gains to 5.15% at midday, outperforming the Nasdaq-like Hang Seng Tech Index’s 2.9% increase. Shares of Z.AI, previously known as Zhipu AI, and MiniMax fell a further 13% and 5.7%, respectively, following the powerful model releases by rivals.
Analysts say that leadership in the large language model space is changing quickly.
“Competition is likely to intensify, eventually leaving only a small group of large language model developers capable of funding frontier-model development,” said Laila Khawaja, research director at Gavekal Technologies.
Write to Tracy Qu at tracy.qu@wsj.com
