Alibaba Just Gave Away Its Best AI Model For Free, Almost Matching Claude and ChatGPT

Alibaba is releasing its best AI model, Qwen Max, for free download starting next week. This move aims to challenge market leaders like Claude and ChatGPT, potentially reshaping global AI competition and development dynamics. While Alibaba's own scorecard indicates that American models still maintain an advantage in coding capabilities, the release of Qwen3.8-Max underscores the intensifying race to provide high-performance public weights and the ongoing challenges in matching top-tier American AI technology.