Alibaba creates new unit to push consumer use of its Qwen AI models

Alibaba Group Holding said on Tuesday that it will set up a new division to push the consumer use of artificial intelligence applications based on its Qwen family of large language models.
The new business unit, Qwen Consumer Business Group, led by Alibaba vice-president Wu Jia, will oversee the Qwen chatbot app, the Quark AI assistant and cloud drive, AI hardware products, the UC Browser and the online reading platform Shuqi.

The move marked a significant organisational change at Alibaba to promote the consumer use of its AI offerings after it secured a dominant position in open-source models for developers. The division’s top priority is to turn the Qwen chatbot into an accessible “super app” for use in scenarios including glasses, personal computers and cars. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

The change combines the former Intelligent Information Business Group with the Intelligent Connectivity Business Group, the latter of which oversees consumer hardware such as the TmallGenie smart speaker and Alibaba’s AI glasses, both run by Wu.

The Qwen app – a revamped version of Alibaba’s earlier Tongyi app – was relaunched in November. It is viewed as the company’s most ambitious push yet into the consumer AI market, where stand-alone chatbot apps from foreign AI firms like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and xAI, as well as domestic rivals including ByteDance, Tencent, Baidu, DeepSeek and Moonshot, all compete for users.

The free, multipurpose Qwen, which can answer queries, transcribe audio, generate photos and videos, conduct research and produce slide decks, notched more than 10 million downloads in its first week of public beta, outpacing early uptake of ChatGPT and DeepSeek when they were launched, according to Alibaba.

Alibaba Cloud, the AI and cloud-computing unit of Alibaba, has been driving the adoption and commercialisation of the Qwen series over the past two years amid the global AI surge.

As one of China’s leading AI developers, Alibaba Cloud embraced an open-source approach, making its AI models available for third-party developers to use, modify and distribute. The choice has made Qwen one of the most widely used foundation models worldwide.

During an earnings call following Alibaba’s third-quarter results announcement, group CEO Eddie Wu Yongming said the company was advancing on both the AI-to-business and AI-to-consumer fronts.

On the enterprise side, the company was building “full-stack” AI capabilities, including high-performance infrastructure, foundation models and development frameworks. On the consumer side, it aimed to make Qwen “the AI entry for everyday life” by integrating e-commerce, maps, navigation and local services on the back of Alibaba’s ecosystem, he said.

Alibaba reported a 34 per cent year-on-year increase in cloud-computing revenue to 39.8 billion yuan (US$5.6 billion) in the second quarter, with AI-related product revenue achieving triple-digit growth for the ninth consecutive quarter.

sangita