Alibaba’s Qwen tech lead steps down after major AI push

Alibaba’s Qwen tech lead steps down after major AI push

Alibaba’s Qwen AI project has misplaced considered one of its most seen technical leaders just a day after the Chinese tech large unveiled its new Qwen 3.5 open-weight small fashions.

Junyang Lin, a central technical chief on Alibaba’s Qwen team, said in a put up on X on Tuesday that he was “stepping down” from the project, without elaborating. He joined Alibaba in July 2019 and have become a part of the Qwen team in April 2023, in accordance to his LinkedIn profile.

The abrupt departure, which drew strong reactions from colleagues and business companions, comes as global competitors among AI builders intensifies and firms race to build fashions rivaling those from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.

Alibaba’s Qwen household of fashions has emerged as considered one of China’s most distinguished open-weight AI efforts, with latest releases posting benchmark outcomes that often rival methods from main U.S. builders. The Chinese tech large launched the mannequin in April 2023 and opened it to public use that September after receiving regulatory clearance.

Alibaba launched its Qwen 3.5 Small Model collection on Monday, with 4 fashions spanning 0.8B, 2B, 4B, and 9B parameters. The methods, the company said, are native multimodal fashions designed for makes use of starting from on-device AI deployment to light-weight brokers. The launch drew consideration from figures in the AI community, including Elon Musk, who wrote on X that the fashions confirmed “impressive intelligence density.”

Lin’s departure got here just as the Qwen team was pushing ahead with new releases, prompting unusually strong reactions from colleagues and companions who described his position in the project as central.

Wenting Zhao, a research scientist on the Qwen team, described Lin’s departure as “the end of an era,” thanking him in a put up on X for serving to drive the project’s advances in open source AI and engineering. Yuchen Jin, chief technology officer of AI infrastructure startup Hyperbolic, said Lin helped join Qwen with the global developer community, recalling late-night collaboration with the team during mannequin launches. Tiezhen Wang, head of APAC ecosystem at Hugging Face, also described Lin’s departure as “an immense loss” for the Qwen project.

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The circumstances surrounding Lin’s departure stay unclear. Lin didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Chen Cheng, a contributor to the Qwen project, wrote that he was “heartbroken” by the news. In his put up on X, Cheng gave the impression to be addressing Lin immediately, writing, “I know leaving wasn’t your choice” and said the team had been working together on mannequin launches only hours earlier.

Binyuan Hui, another member of the Qwen team, has up to date his X profile to explain himself as “formerly MTS @Alibaba_Qwen.” However, it’s not instantly clear whether or not he had left the company or when the change was made.

Alibaba didn’t reply to a request for touch upon the causes for the transfer or on the management construction of the Qwen team.

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