Alibaba's Qwen AI Models Hit 700 Million Downloads, Becomes World's Most Popular Open-Source AI System

Jan 12, 2026
South China Morning Post
Article image for Alibaba's Qwen AI Models Hit 700 Million Downloads, Becomes World's Most Popular Open-Source AI System

Summary

Alibaba's Qwen AI models shatter records with 700 million downloads on Hugging Face, becoming the world's most popular open-source AI system and outpacing Meta, OpenAI, and other competitors with December downloads alone exceeding the next eight rivals combined.

Key Points

  • Alibaba Cloud's Qwen family of AI models surpasses 700 million downloads on Hugging Face platform, becoming the world's most widely used open-source AI system
  • Qwen downloads in December alone exceed the combined total of the next eight most popular models globally, including those from Meta Platforms, OpenAI, and Chinese competitors
  • Tens of thousands of real-world applications worldwide are built using Qwen models, marking a historic peak for Chinese open-source large models in the international developer community

Tags

Read Original Article