Alibaba's Qwen models top global downloads, yet AI revenue stays under 4% of total

阿里巴巴人工智能模型备受欢迎，但难以变现

Alibaba's Qwen open-source models are downloaded about 1 million times a day on Hugging Face, making them the most downloaded open-source AI system globally. Yet AI-related revenue hit only $1.3 billion in Q1, under 4% of total revenue, dwarfed by the company's plan to spend over $55 billion on AI infrastructure by end of next year. Internal disagreements over monetization led to the departure of chief engineer Lin Junyang in March, along with several core engineers. Alibaba is shifting from open-source to paid closed-source models, releasing three closed models in April alone. The U.S. Defense Department recently blacklisted Alibaba, and Anthropic accused it of using 24,000 fake accounts to scrape data; Alibaba declined to comment on the allegation.

Why it matters: NYT exclusive with internal data and personnel details. The open-source monetization tension is a core industry issue, and Alibaba's struggle as China's open-source flagship carries strong reference value. Score not higher because this is deep business analysis rather than a p...