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Alibaba has launched Qwen3, a groundbreaking series of open-source AI models that experts believe may compete with leading systems from Google and OpenAI.

This move marks a significant step in China’s ambition to lead in open-source AI development.

Qwen3 distinguishes itself as more than just a typical large language model. It functions as a hybrid reasoning system, seamlessly integrating fast-response “non-thinking” modes with a more deliberate “thinking” mode, allowing developers to balance performance and speed.

“We have flawlessly combined thinking and non-thinking modes,” stated Alibaba.

The models vary in size from 0.6 billion to 235 billion parameters, many of which are available for free on Hugging Face, GitHub, and Alibaba Cloud. Notably, the largest model, Qwen-3-235B-A22B, has outperformed OpenAI’s o3-mini and Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro on critical coding and reasoning benchmarks, although it hasn’t been made publicly accessible yet.

A Closer Look at Qwen3

• Trained on 36 trillion tokens
• Supports 119 languages
• Employs a “mixture of experts” (MoE) architecture for improved efficiency
• Designed for applications ranging from mobile AI to cloud deployments

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

The Competitive Landscape

Qwen3 illustrates how