Alibaba’s Qwen Tech Lead Steps Down After Major Ai Push - Beritaja

Alibaba’s Qwen AI task has mislaid 1 of its about visible method leaders conscionable a time aft the Chinese tech elephantine unveiled its caller Qwen 3.5 open-weight mini models.

Junyang Lin, a cardinal method leader connected Alibaba’s Qwen team, said successful a station connected X connected Tuesday that he was “stepping down” from the project, without elaborating. He joined Alibaba successful July 2019 and became portion of the Qwen squad successful April 2023, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The abrupt departure, which drew beardown reactions from colleagues and manufacture partners, comes arsenic world title among AI developers intensifies and companies title to build models rivaling those from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.

Alibaba’s Qwen family of models has emerged arsenic 1 of China’s about salient open-weight AI efforts, pinch caller releases posting benchmark results that often rival systems from starring U.S. developers. The Chinese tech elephantine introduced the exemplary successful April 2023 and opened it to nationalist usage that September aft receiving regulatory clearance.

Alibaba introduced its Qwen 3.5 Small Model bid connected Monday, pinch 4 models spanning 0.8B, 2B, 4B, and 9B parameters. The systems, the institution said, are autochthonal multimodal models designed for uses ranging from on-device AI deployment to lightweight agents. The motorboat drew attraction from figures successful the AI community, including Elon Musk, who wrote connected X that the models showed “impressive intelligence density.”

Lin’s departure came conscionable arsenic the Qwen squad was pushing up pinch caller releases, prompting unusually beardown reactions from colleagues and partners who described his domiciled successful the task arsenic central.

Wenting Zhao, a investigation intelligence connected the Qwen team, described Lin’s departure arsenic “the extremity of an era,” thanking him successful a station connected X for helping thrust the project’s advances successful open-source AI and engineering. Yuchen Jin, main exertion serviceman of AI infrastructure startup Hyperbolic, said Lin helped link Qwen pinch the world developer community, recalling late-night collaboration pinch the squad during exemplary launches. Tiezhen Wang, caput of APAC ecosystem astatine Hugging Face, besides described Lin’s departure arsenic “an immense loss” for the Qwen project.

The circumstances surrounding Lin’s departure stay unclear. Lin did not respond to a petition for comment.

Chen Cheng, a contributor to the Qwen project, wrote that he was “heartbroken” by the news. In his station connected X, Cheng appeared to beryllium addressing Lin directly, penning “I cognize leaving wasn’t your choice” and said the squad had been moving together connected exemplary launches only hours earlier.

Binyuan Hui, different personnel of the Qwen team, has updated his X floor plan to picture himself arsenic “formerly MTS @Alibaba_Qwen.” However, it is not instantly clear whether he had near the institution aliases erstwhile the alteration was made.

Alibaba did not respond to a petition for remark connected the reasons for the move aliases connected the activity building of the Qwen team.