Alibaba's Qwen Model: China's AI Factory Ambition

Alibaba has unveiled its new Qwen model and custom chips, aiming to become China's "AI factory." The tech giant launched Qwen3.7-Max, a new large language model. A senior vice-president at Alibaba's cloud computing unit described AI as a new form of manufacturing that generates revenue through "training and inference factories." He stated that Alibaba is building China's AI factory, operating all five layers of the full AI stack. This includes chips, agentic cloud, AI models, model service platforms, and agentic applications. The Qwen3.7-Max model is designed as a robust foundation for AI agents. Alibaba says it excels at agentic coding, complex reasoning, and "long-horizon tasks." These are complex, multi-step missions requiring continuous decision-making. The company claims Qwen3.7-Max can operate autonomously for up to 35 hours without performance issues. This development signals a major push in the AI sector.