On November 17, Alibaba announced the public launch of the latest Qwen app. The company views the rollout as a key step toward building an advanced artificial intelligence model that can power a conversational assistant capable of completing tasks. Its broader goal is to create an entry point for everyday AI use. The launch also marks Alibaba’s latest push to expand in the consumer AI market and unify its branding in that space.
Last week, Alibaba quietly updated the Qwen app’s product description. In the app store, Qwen is described as Alibaba’s official AI assistant powered by its most advanced model, offering conversational Q&A, AI-supported writing tools, and a multimodal all-in-one camera.
One feature attracting market interest is the upcoming shopping agent. In the coming months, Alibaba plans to add agentic AI capabilities to Qwen, enabling natural language shopping across Taobao, Tmall, and other platforms. Users will be able to issue simple commands, such as “Find me a down jacket for winter,” and the AI will search, compare prices, and place an order automatically.
According to 36Kr, Alibaba also plans to integrate maps, food delivery, ticketing, office tools, learning functions, shopping, health services, and other features into the Qwen app, giving it broader task handling capabilities. From a product standpoint, Alibaba’s current portfolio spans software such as the Qwen assistant and hardware including AI glasses. These units fall under the business group led by Wu Jia, an Alibaba veteran and former head of Taobao’s user operations. He returned to the intelligent information business group in November 2024 to focus on consumer AI development.
Launching the Qwen app is widely viewed as Alibaba’s attempt to compete directly with ChatGPT and strengthen its position in consumer AI applications. In the open-source ecosystem, Qwen is already among the world’s leading AI model series. Alibaba said global downloads exceeded 600 million as of September 2024, with more than 170,000 derivative models. On Hugging Face, Qwen accounted for more than 30% of all model downloads in 2024.
Alibaba released the original version of the app in April 2023, becoming one of the first major Chinese companies to launch an AI assistant, months ahead of ByteDance’s Doubao and well before Moonshot AI’s Kimi assistant, which later became the most visible early entrant in the consumer market.
However, Alibaba invested relatively lightly in its consumer AI apps in the beginning. A former team member told 36Kr that the early Tongyi Lab at Alibaba Cloud focused on training and iterating foundation models. Its consumer app operations were “laidback,” serving mainly as a showcase for the model’s capabilities.
At the same time, Alibaba released a wide range of models and products, which diluted their impact. The company’s model family eventually splintered into multiple sub-brands, including the Qwen large language model, the Wanxiang video model, the Bailing speech model, and others. Alibaba has since begun consolidating its consumer-facing AI products to create a unified user-facing portal. For example, Tingwu, originally launched as a standalone product in 2024, is now integrated into the Qwen app.
The shift reflects a broader industry trend: success in consumer AI depends less on marketing and more on the strength of the underlying model. DeepSeek illustrates this shift. During the 2025 Lunar New Year, it surged in popularity without any advertising, attracting 100 million users in seven days. The rise was driven by a notable leap in model capabilities that translated into a better user experience.
This has pushed companies to pursue breakthroughs in model performance more aggressively. When Anthropic released Claude 4.5 with significant improvements in programming capabilities, its revenue climbed from about USD 5 billion in early September to nearly USD 7 billion by mid-October, an increase of roughly 40%.
Following DeepSeek’s momentum, major companies have accelerated investment in consumer AI products and organizational restructuring. In February, Tencent shifted QQ Browser, Sogou Input Method, and other products into its cloud and smart industries group, combining them with its Yuanbao AI assistant. Baidu moved Baidu Wangpan from its cloud division to the mobile ecosystem group, consolidating it with Wenxiaoyan.
According to 36Kr, the international version of the Qwen app is already underway. Alibaba hopes to use Qwen’s influence among global developers to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT overseas.
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A major theme in AI for 2025 is that China’s open-source models have narrowed the gap with leading closed-source counterparts in both performance and cost. Alibaba has played a central role in this shift. After releasing Qwen 3 in April and making a significant push at this year’s Apsara Conference, the company appears to have strengthened its position in the open-source community. Its influence now extends beyond developers. 36Kr notes that a growing trend in Silicon Valley is for companies to build AI applications on top of Qwen, opening a rare window of opportunity for Alibaba to expand globally.
Competition remains intense. ChatGPT no longer stands out solely by virtue of model strength. OpenAI has introduced rapid updates across applications, including the Atlas browser and the Sora video app, and has begun integrating with e-commerce. These moves signal further acceleration in the consumer AI race.
The window of advantage for each new generation of models is narrowing. In many ways, the model has become a company’s most important product. Alibaba’s efforts to consolidate its consumer AI brand reflect this reality: as models evolve quickly, the next goal for major AI companies will be reaching broader audiences and building complete commercial loops at speed.
KrASIA Connection features translated and adapted content that was originally published by 36Kr. This article was written by Deng Yongyi for 36Kr.