Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing division of Alibaba Group, has open-sourced over 100 newly-launched AI models, collectively known as Qwen 2.5. This move, announced at the annual Apsara Conference, marks a significant step in the company’s mission to make advanced AI technologies more accessible to developers and businesses globally.
In addition to unveiling these models, Alibaba Cloud introduced a revamped full-stack infrastructure designed to meet the growing demand for robust AI computing solutions. This new infrastructure includes innovative cloud products and services that enhance computing capabilities, networking, and data centre architecture. The goal is to support the development and deployment of advanced AI models across various sectors, from automotive and gaming to scientific research.
A Commitment to Future-Focused AI Infrastructure
Eddie Wu, Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, emphasised the company’s strong focus on AI development: “Alibaba Cloud is investing, with unprecedented intensity, in the research and development of AI technology and the building of its global infrastructure. We aim to establish an AI infrastructure of the future to serve our global customers and unlock their business potential.”
The Qwen 2.5 models range from 0.5 to 72 billion parameters and feature improved capabilities in mathematics, coding, and knowledge retention. Supporting over 29 languages, these models are designed for use across both edge and cloud environments, catering to a wide variety of AI applications.
Qwen Models Gain Popularity in Open-Source Community
Since their initial launch in April 2023, the Qwen AI models have gained significant traction, surpassing 40 million downloads across platforms like Hugging Face and ModelScope. The models have also inspired the creation of more than 50,000 derivative models on Hugging Face alone, demonstrating the growing interest from developers and the open-source community.
Jingren Zhou, CTO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, said the initiative aims to empower developers and businesses of all sizes: “This initiative is set to empower developers and corporations of all sizes, enhancing their ability to leverage AI technologies and further stimulating the growth of the open-source community.”
Expanding AI Capabilities
In addition to releasing the Qwen 2.5 models, Alibaba Cloud also announced an upgrade to its proprietary flagship model, Qwen-Max. The enhanced version boasts state-of-the-art performance in language comprehension, reasoning, mathematics, and coding, putting it on par with leading models in the industry.
Alibaba Cloud has further expanded its multimodal capabilities, introducing a new text-to-video model as part of its Tongyi Wanxiang large model family. This model can generate high-quality videos in various visual styles, from realistic footage to 3D animation, based on both Chinese and English text prompts.
Additionally, the company launched Qwen2-VL, an updated vision language model that can understand videos longer than 20 minutes and answer questions based on video content. Complementing this is the new AI Developer assistant, powered by Qwen, which supports programmers by automating tasks such as requirement analysis, code programming, and bug detection and fixing.
Infrastructure Upgrades to Support AI Growth
To underpin these AI advancements, Alibaba Cloud introduced several key infrastructure updates, including:
- CUBE DC 5.0: A next-generation data centre architecture designed to improve energy efficiency and operational performance.
- Alibaba Cloud Open Lake: A solution aimed at maximising data utility for generative AI applications.
- PAI AI Scheduler: A cloud-native scheduling engine for better computing resource management.
- DMS: OneMeta+OneOps: A platform enabling unified metadata management across multiple cloud environments.
- 9th Generation Enterprise Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance: Offering enhanced performance for a wide range of applications.
These infrastructure updates, along with the release of more than 100 open-source AI models, are part of Alibaba Cloud’s broader strategy to provide customers and partners with the tools they need to build more efficient, sustainable, and inclusive AI applications.
With this combination of innovative AI models and cutting-edge infrastructure, Alibaba Cloud is positioning itself at the forefront of the AI revolution, enabling businesses of all sizes to harness the power of artificial intelligence.
