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

Alibaba’s Qwen AI task has mislaid 1 of its astir disposable method leaders conscionable a time aft the Chinese tech elephantine unveiled its caller Qwen 3.5 open-weight tiny models.

Junyang Lin, a cardinal method person connected Alibaba’s Qwen team, said successful a station connected X connected Tuesday that helium was “stepping down” from the project, without elaborating. He joined Alibaba successful July 2019 and became portion of the Qwen squad successful April 2023, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The abrupt departure, which drew beardown reactions from colleagues and manufacture partners, comes arsenic planetary contention among AI developers intensifies and companies contention to physique models rivaling those from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.

Alibaba’s Qwen household of models has emerged arsenic 1 of China’s astir salient open-weight AI efforts, with caller releases posting benchmark results that often rival systems from starring U.S. developers. The Chinese tech elephantine introduced the exemplary successful April 2023 and opened it to nationalist usage that September aft receiving regulatory clearance.

Alibaba introduced its Qwen 3.5 Small Model bid connected Monday, with 4 models spanning 0.8B, 2B, 4B, and 9B parameters. The systems, the institution said, are autochthonal multimodal models designed for uses ranging from on-device AI deployment to lightweight agents. The motorboat drew attraction from figures successful the AI community, including Elon Musk, who wrote connected X that the models showed “impressive quality density.”

Lin’s departure came conscionable arsenic the Qwen squad was pushing up with caller releases, prompting unusually beardown reactions from colleagues and partners who described his relation successful the task arsenic central.

Wenting Zhao, a probe idiosyncratic connected the Qwen team, described Lin’s departure arsenic “the extremity of an era,” thanking him successful a station connected X for helping thrust the project’s advances successful open-source AI and engineering. Yuchen Jin, main exertion serviceman of AI infrastructure startup Hyperbolic, said Lin helped link Qwen with the planetary developer community, recalling late-night collaboration with the squad during exemplary launches. Tiezhen Wang, caput of APAC ecosystem astatine Hugging Face, besides described Lin’s departure arsenic “an immense loss” for the Qwen project.

The circumstances surrounding Lin’s departure stay unclear. Lin did not respond to a petition for comment.

Chen Cheng, a contributor to the Qwen project, wrote that helium was “heartbroken” by the news. In his station connected X, Cheng appeared to beryllium addressing Lin directly, penning “I cognize leaving wasn’t your choice” and said the squad had been moving unneurotic connected exemplary launches lone hours earlier.

Binyuan Hui, different subordinate of the Qwen team, has updated his X illustration to picture himself arsenic “formerly MTS @Alibaba_Qwen.” However, it is not instantly wide whether helium had near the institution oregon erstwhile the alteration was made.

Alibaba did not respond to a petition for remark connected the reasons for the determination oregon connected the enactment operation of the Qwen team.