Alibaba Expands Qwen AI Push, Rejects 'Collective Resignation' Claims

Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) is reshaping its artificial intelligence strategy by restructuring leadership, recruiting new talent, and accelerating the development of its Qwen large language model amid intensifying competition in China’s AI market. Leadership Changes And New AI Hiring Alibaba is reshuffling leadership and increasing resources around its Qwen large language model after a key technical leader departed, amid intensifying competition among China’s major technology companies in the rapidly expanding AI application market. In an internal email, CEO Eddie Wu addressed the resignation of Lin Junyang, a core leader of the Qwen model. Wu said Alibaba Cloud CTO Zhou Jingren will continue to lead the Tongyi Lab, and the company will establish a foundation model support group to coordinate resources across the organization for large-scale model development, China Daily reported on Saturday. Wu emphasized that building foundational AI models remains a long-term strategic priority, adding that Alibaba will maintain its open-source model strategy, increase investment in AI research and development, and strengthen efforts to attract top talent. Junyang announced his departure on social media, and shortly afterward, Yu Bowen, head of post-training for the Qwen model, also said he was leaving. Reportedly, Alibaba hired Zhou Hao, a former senior staff research scientist at Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google DeepMind, to lead post-training research for the Qwen AI models. Zhou replaces Yu Bowen. Zhou holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and previously contributed to several Google AI products, including Gemini 3, AI Mode, and Deep Research, according to his LinkedIn profile. Qwen Development And Team Stability Junyang, one of Alibaba’s youngest P10-level technical leaders, led the development of the Qwen3-Max model with more than 1 trillion parameters and later guided the release of the Qwen3.5 series of smaller models. Alibaba said the Qwen base model team is not evaluated using commercial metrics such as daily active users, rejecting speculation that commercialization targets triggered the departures. The company said the goal of the Qwen model is to push the limits of model intelligence and ultimately move toward artificial general intelligence (AGI), adding that the team remains stable and dismissing claims of a collective resignation. BABA Price Action: Alibaba shares were up 0.47% at $131.41 at the time of publication on Monday, according to Benzinga Pro data. Photo by Poetra.RH via Shutterstock