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Bloomberg <\/p>\n Bloomberg <\/p>\n
(Bloomberg) — The architect of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.\u2019s chief AI model has quit his post, a surprise departure that\u2019s rattled the developer community and raised questions about the Chinese online leader\u2019s pivot to artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
Junyang Lin, who also goes by Justin, announced on X he was stepping down as the tech lead for Qwen, Alibaba\u2019s main AI platform. That early morning post triggered a surge of support from the open-source community. Alibaba\u2019s shares slid as much as 5.3% in Hong Kong \u2014 their biggest intraday loss since October \u2014 in part because investors are unwinding AI-related trades given global uncertainty.<\/p>\n
Most Read from Bloomberg<\/p>\n
Lin is one of the most influential figures behind Alibaba\u2019s transition to AI, an endeavor intended to drive its next phase of growth beyond online commerce. During his tenure, the Qwen series of models became the foundation for Alibaba\u2019s marquee AI app and services, and consistently ranked among the world\u2019s top-performing platforms.<\/p>\n
That placed the online company among the frontrunners of a broader effort by Chinese firms to compete with the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic PBC. Qwen\u2019s advances this week drew the attention of Elon Musk, who commented on its \u201cimpressive\u201d density.<\/p>\n
\u201cme stepping down. bye my beloved qwen,\u201d Lin wrote on X, without elaborating.<\/p>\n
The reasons behind Lin\u2019s exit remain unclear. The AI engineer, who last year set up a new robotics team, had been posting updates about Qwen on X just a day before. And Alibaba last month unveiled a major upgrade to that marquee platform, designed to support AI agentic tasks as well as handle text, photo and video inputs.<\/p>\n
Lin and Alibaba representatives didn\u2019t respond to messages seeking comment.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Lin\u2019s revelation \u2014 which spurred more than a thousand replies including well-wishes and questions within hours \u2014 casts a cloud over Alibaba\u2019s AI ambitions. At least one other Alibaba engineer announced he was departing in the wake of Lin\u2019s post. MiniMax Group Inc. \u2014 an Alibaba investee and AI pioneer \u2014 thanked Lin for his contributions to the open-source community.<\/p>\n
Alibaba has been among the most aggressive investors in and advocates for AI since DeepSeek fired up the local tech industry.<\/p>\n
In 2025, the company better known for creating China\u2019s biggest online marketplace declared it was going all-in on AI and the pursuit of super-intelligence, while building a suite of AI services and products centered on Qwen technology. Chief Executive Officer Eddie Wu pledged more than $53 billion toward infrastructure and AI development \u2014 an outlay he\u2019s said the company could surpass over time.<\/p>\n
Lin had been working on building generalist models at Alibaba since 2022 and oversaw its open-source initiatives, according to his LinkedIn profile. He holds a master\u2019s degree from Peking University.<\/p>\n
In one of his last public appearances as Qwen head, Lin told a forum in Beijing in January that Chinese companies were unlikely to leapfrog the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic with fundamental breakthroughs in AI over the next three to five years.<\/p>\n
\u201cA massive amount of OpenAI\u2019s compute is dedicated to next-generation research, whereas we are stretched thin \u2014 just meeting delivery demands consumes most of our resources,\u201d Lin said at the time.<\/p>\n
What Bloomberg Intelligence Says<\/p>\n
The departure of Junyang Lin, tech lead for Alibaba\u2019s Qwen open-source model, is unlikely to impact the tech giant\u2019s AI development. Monetizing AI remains the key challenge for Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent, in a commoditized sector that\u2019s awash with largely undifferentiated, free-to-access AI apps. The rising, though minor, profit contribution from Alibaba\u2019s cloud-intelligence division won\u2019t offset pressure in its core e-commerce and food-delivery business.<\/p>\n
– Robert Lea and Jasmine Lyu, analysts<\/p>\n
Click here for the research.<\/p>\n
His departure follows a recent flurry of activity.<\/p>\n
Alibaba, which also operates a Netflix Inc.-like streaming service and one of China\u2019s biggest meal delivery platforms, revamped its mobile app Qwen in November as a major step into consumer-facing AI services.<\/p>\n
It plans to build the app into an all-around personal assistant by gradually integrating individual services under the Alibaba umbrella.<\/p>\n
In January, it linked its flagship online shopping and travel services to Qwen, taking its biggest step yet to build the app into a one-stop artificial intelligence platform for consumers.<\/p>\n
(Updates with share movement and analysts\u2019 comment from the second paragraph.)<\/p>\n
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek<\/p>\n
\u00a92026 Bloomberg L.P.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bloomberg (Bloomberg) — The architect of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.\u2019s chief AI model has quit his post, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,2948,343,344,1877,85,46,159394,159672,8166,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-321363","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-alibaba","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-bloomberg","13":"tag-il","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-junyang-lin","16":"tag-open-source-community","17":"tag-qwen","18":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}