Market Update: Alibaba’s AI Developments
Alibaba’s shares, which are traded on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, experienced a notable increase following the announcement of a new artificial intelligence tool. This innovation aims to position the Chinese technology giant in direct competition with Deepseek’s R1 tool.
By the close of trading on Thursday, Alibaba’s shares surged by 8.3% in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, shares trading on the New York Stock Exchange saw a pre-market rise of approximately 2.5%.
The newly unveiled QWQ-32B model is designed as a competitor to Deepseek’s R1, drawing attention to its capabilities. The QWQ-32B operates on a base of 32 billion parameters, which is significantly fewer than the 671 billion parameters utilized by Deepseek’s model; of these, 37 billion parameters are actively used during reasoning processes.
Parameters—essential variables that large language models employ during their training and subsequent decision-making—are increasingly sought after, especially in a landscape where demand for AI models that utilize fewer resources is on the rise.
Alibaba has expressed confidence in the new model’s performance, reporting significant advancements particularly in mathematics and programming tasks.
The AI sector is intensifying its competition to deliver more efficient, high-performance models following the surprise introduction of the R1 earlier this year.
In a related development, Alibaba announced plans last month to invest a minimum of 380 billion yuan (approximately $52.44 billion) in cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure over the next three years.
At the end of January, the company launched “QWEN 2.5,” claiming it surpassed the renowned “Deepseek-V3” model in performance.
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