Division of Alibaba GroupFounded April 2023🇨🇳Hangzhou, ChinaCEO Liu Dayiheng, Qwen LLM project lead (Yicai, September 21, 2026, citing the Apsara Conference site). Not a separate company CEO. Alibaba Group CEO is Eddie Wu.
Qwen (Tongyi Qianwen) is Alibaba's family of large language and multimodal models, not a separately listed company. Alibaba Cloud launched a public beta in April 2023.
Latest update Oct 11, 2026
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The models are served through Alibaba Cloud Model Studio and the Qwen app at qwen.ai, and many weights are published for others to run. On August 3, 2026 Alibaba introduced Qwen3.8-Max, a 2.4 trillion parameter model with 95 billion parameters active and a context window of up to 1 million tokens, then released those flagship weights and an Apache 2.0 27 billion parameter model. On September 20, 2026 it open-sourced Qwen-Image-2.1, a 7B visual-generation model for text-to-image and editing, and on October 9 it released the eight-step Qwen-Image-2.1-Turbo checkpoint plus hosted Pro and Turbo APIs. On September 22, 2026 Alibaba said the next model, Qwen 4, was in training, with Qwen 4.5 and Qwen 5 projected at 5 to 10 trillion parameters. Yicai reported on September 21 that Liu Dayiheng had been named Qwen LLM project lead. No standalone Qwen revenue figure was found.
alibabacloud.comUpdated Oct 11, 2026
Analysis · 2 min read · Sep 24, 2026The long view on Qwen: strategy, technology and what to watch02
Later in 2026
Qwen 4 in training
TargetQwen 4 in training; Qwen 4.5 and Qwen 5 projected at 5 to 10 trillion parameters
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Alibaba's Qwen team released Qwen-Image-2.1-Turbo on Oct. 9 as an 8-step checkpoint of the 7B Qwen-Image-2.1 generator for text-to-image and image editing. Hosted Pro and Turbo APIs went live the same day on Alibaba Cloud Model Studio, with the Turbo weights available for local Diffusers inference. Model Studio lists Turbo image generation at $0.016 per image on the Singapore international endpoint.
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Alibaba's flagship Qwen model announced August 3, 2026. It has 2.4 trillion parameters, 95 billion active, and a context window of up to 1 million tokens, using a sparse mixture-of-experts design. It was offered first as an API on Alibaba Cloud Model Studio. Weights were later released as Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B. Wikipedia says that larger release is not on the same Apache 2.0 terms as the 27B model.
A smaller open-weight Qwen3.8 model. Alibaba's August 17, 2026 post says it is a native multimodal dense model that can run on consumer hardware, with a 262K context window that extends to 1 million tokens, under the Apache 2.0 license. Alibaba said it matched Qwen3.7-Plus, an MoE model it described as ten times the size.
The public Qwen site and chatbot at qwen.ai. Wikipedia describes Qwen as available as a web app and on Android. Alibaba's August 3 post points developers at the Qwen blog on that domain and says the model family powers services across its platforms. This entry is the consumer and developer front door, not a separate legal entity.
Eight-step accelerated checkpoint of Qwen-Image-2.1 for text-to-image generation and image editing, using the same 7B visual generation architecture. Alibaba released the weights and hosted Pro and Turbo APIs on Oct. 9, 2026 via GitHub, Hugging Face and Alibaba Cloud Model Studio.
Open-weight unified text-to-image generation and image-editing model in the Qwen family. Alibaba's September 21, 2026 post and the GitHub README say the visual generation component has 7 billion parameters and 32 Single-Stream DiT layers, with native transparent (RGBA) output, up to 10 reference images, and local edits via circles, paint, or masks. Weights are on Hugging Face and ModelScope under the Qwen Research License. Qwen-Image-2.1-Turbo is a later eight-step checkpoint of this architecture.
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No Qwen headcount was in the pages opened.
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Operating status
Operational
Qwen is an active model family inside Alibaba. Qwen3.8-Max remains the language flagship. Qwen-Image-2.1 weights were published September 20, 2026, and Qwen-Image-2.1-Turbo plus hosted Pro/Turbo APIs followed October 9. On September 22 Alibaba said Qwen 4 was in training. The consumer and developer entry point is still qwen.ai. There is no separate Qwen profit statement.
Qwen3.8-Max was made available through APIs on Alibaba Cloud Model Studio. The September 22 roadmap also ties Qwen to Alibaba Cloud's model, agent, and data-center business. No Qwen or Cloud revenue number was opened, so this is a product channel, not a sales figure.
Alibaba publishes Qwen weights for others to download and run. Qwen3.8-27B is Apache 2.0. Wikipedia says the 2.4 trillion parameter release uses a license that requires a commercial agreement after a provider passes US$50 million of revenue in 12 months. Open weights are a distribution strategy. They are not, by themselves, recognized revenue.
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2026
On September 20, 2026 the Qwen team open-sourced Qwen-Image-2.1, a unified text-to-image and editing model with a 7 billion parameter visual generation component. Alibaba Cloud's September 21 post says it adds native transparency, up to 10 reference images, and local edits. Weights are on Hugging Face and ModelScope. An eight-step Turbo checkpoint and hosted Pro/Turbo APIs followed on October 9.
Releases Qwen-Image-2.1-Turbo and hosted Pro/Turbo APIs
On Oct. 9, 2026 the Qwen team released Qwen-Image-2.1-Turbo for 8-step image generation and editing and said Qwen-Image-2.1 Pro and Turbo APIs were live on Alibaba Cloud Model Studio. Turbo uses the same 7B visual generation architecture as Qwen-Image-2.1. Model Studio lists Singapore international Turbo image generation at $0.016 per image.
Qwen3.8-Max and the 27B open model
On August 3, 2026 Alibaba announced Qwen3.8-Max, 2.4 trillion parameters with 95 billion active and a context window of up to 1 million tokens, on Alibaba Cloud Model Studio, with weights planned for the following week. By the August 17 post, the flagship weights were out as Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B and Qwen3.8-27B was out under Apache 2.0. Wikipedia says the larger model's license requires a commercial agreement once a provider's revenue exceeds US$50 million in 12 months.
2023
