Alibaba’s Qwen family captures over 50% of global open-source downloads: report

Rapid rise of Qwen

It has been reported that Alibaba Cloud (阿里云), the AI and cloud unit of Alibaba (阿里巴巴), captured more than 50% of global open‑source model downloads as of March after open‑sourcing its Qwen 3.5 series, according to a report by Interconnects AI. The US‑based newsletter cites Hugging Face download metrics showing the Qwen family reached nearly 1 billion cumulative downloads by March — a tally that reportedly far outpaces rivals such as Meta’s Llama, DeepSeek and OpenAI models.

Numbers and rivals

Researchers say Qwen alone generated about 153.6 million downloads in February, more than double the combined total of the next eight major players on Hugging Face. Alibaba Cloud released Qwen 3.5 in February and said the models were “on par” with leading US systems from the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic. Chinese models, the report notes, overtook US counterparts on Hugging Face last summer after the rollout of Qwen 2.5 in September 2024.

Why it matters

Why should Western readers care? The surge underscores how China’s open‑source AI ecosystem is no longer confined to domestic use — it is reshaping global developer flows and choices. The trend also sits against a backdrop of geopolitical friction: export controls, chip restrictions and broader US‑China technology competition are driving parallel paths of AI development and deployment. Some US firms, including Nvidia and OpenAI, are making early gains in certain segments, but the download figures highlight the speed and scale of Chinese model adoption in the open‑source sphere.