Qwen

Qwen (千问, formerly marketed as Tongyi Qianwen / 通义千问) is the artificial-intelligence model and assistant brand of Alibaba Group, developed within Alibaba Cloud's Tongyi Lab. It spans a family of large language models, multimodal and vision-language models, coding and math-specialized models, and audio/speech models, distributed both as open-weight releases on public model hubs and as commercial API services through Alibaba Cloud's Model Studio (DashScope) platform. The brand also fronts a consumer-facing AI assistant application and web service, positioning Qwen as Alibaba's flagship generative-AI offering for both enterprises and everyday users. Qwen's model line is organized by scale and capability — from small edge-deployable models to very large flagship models — and by modality, including text, image understanding and generation, video, and speech. The open-source releases have made Qwen one of the most widely downloaded and fine-tuned model families globally, giving Alibaba a strong position in the developer ecosystem alongside its cloud infrastructure business. Enterprises access Qwen through Alibaba Cloud, where it is bundled with computing, storage, and model-serving tooling. As a brand, Qwen sits at the center of Alibaba's AI strategy, promoted as a general-purpose assistant for consumers and as an enterprise AI platform. Its positioning emphasizes Chinese-language capability, multilingual support, cost-efficient model sizes, and integration with Alibaba's broader commerce and cloud ecosystem. The brand is owned by Alibaba Group and is not separately listed; it operates as part of the Alibaba Cloud intelligence business.

Qwen emerged from Alibaba's artificial-intelligence research efforts inside Alibaba Cloud, which had been building large-model capabilities through its Tongyi (通义) research program. The brand was introduced to the public in 2023 as Tongyi Qianwen (通义千问), a Chinese-language conversational AI model, at a time when Chinese technology companies were rapidly launching generative-AI products. It was initially offered as an enterprise service through Alibaba Cloud and later opened to broader public testing through a dedicated application. Through successive releases, Alibaba expanded the family from a single conversational model into a broad portfolio: general-purpose text models at multiple sizes, vision-language models capable of image understanding, coding-specialized models, math and reasoning models, and audio/speech models. A defining strategic choice was the release of many Qwen models as open weights, which allowed developers and researchers worldwide to download, run, and fine-tune them. This open distribution helped Qwen gain substantial traction on public model hubs and in academic and startup communities, complementing Alibaba's commercial API offerings. As the portfolio grew, Alibaba consolidated the branding, with "Qwen" becoming the primary international name and "千问" the Chinese brand, while the earlier "Tongyi Qianwen" name remained associated with the original launch. The models became a core component of Alibaba Cloud's AI platform, where enterprises could access them through managed APIs and model-serving tools, and the consumer assistant app positioned the brand directly against other major AI chat assistants. Qwen's development reflects Alibaba's broader push to embed AI across its cloud, commerce, and enterprise software businesses. The brand's emphasis on multilingual capability, including strong Chinese-language performance, and on a range of model sizes suited to different deployment costs, has made it a notable competitor in the global open-model ecosystem. Precise release dates, version numbers, and benchmark figures are frequently updated and are best verified against Alibaba's official announcements.

• Alibaba publicly introduces the Tongyi Qianwen (通义千问) conversational AI model in 2023.

• Alibaba expands the family into vision-language, coding, math, and audio models.

• Many Qwen models are released as open weights for global developers.

• Qwen models become available through Alibaba Cloud's managed AI platform and APIs.

• The brand is consolidated under the Qwen / 千问 name for international and Chinese markets.

Alibaba's flagship generative-AI model and assistant brand, spanning open-source developer distribution and enterprise cloud AI services.

• Qwen text large language models

  General-purpose conversational and reasoning models offered at multiple parameter scales.

• Qwen-VL vision-language models

  Multimodal models capable of understanding and reasoning over images and text.

• Qwen-Coder

  Models specialized for code generation and programming assistance.

• Qwen-Audio

  Speech and audio understanding models.

• Qwen consumer assistant

  Consumer-facing AI chat application and web service.

• 2026-10-31

  Alibaba and Apple announce Qianwen integration partnership[5]阿里巴巴与 Apple 宣布集成千问的合作163.com

  Reported: 2026-10-31

  Alibaba and Apple announced a partnership to integrate Qianwen into Apple Intelligence, allowing users in China to access Qianwen capabilities through Siri, writing tools, and Visual Intelligence. The article says the features are planned to begin beta testing on November 4 and roll out to users in December.

• Unconfirmed

  Qwen N1 and N1 Pro AI glasses launch[6]千问N1及N1 Pro AI眼镜发布hy.stock.cnfol.com

  The Alibaba Qwen team announced the N1 and N1 Pro AI glasses in Hangzhou. The article gives first-sale prices starting at 2,218 yuan and 2,600 yuan, respectively.

• Unconfirmed

  Qianwen set to release Personal Agent "Qianwen Go"[7]千问推出Personal Agent“千问Go”finance.sina.com.cn

  Reported: 2026-10-13

  Qianwen's Personal Agent "Qianwen Go" is about to be released. The agent can autonomously operate authorized platforms, compare options and contact service providers to complete tasks for users. Test users have already used it to obtain 70 yuan in cash compensation for a flight delay and to secure a 52 yuan Taobao price-protection refund. The report states that since launching last year, Qianwen has built capabilities in shopping, ride-hailing, delivery and wealth management on the Alibaba ecosystem and open platform.

• 2026-10-13

  Qwen launches N1 Pro and N1 AI glasses, priced from 2,218 yuan[8]千问发布N1 Pro与N1两款AI眼镜，2218元起售finance.sina.com.cn

  Reported: 2026-10-13

  At its Qwen AI hardware 2026 launch event on October 13, Qwen unveiled two AI glasses, the N1 Pro and N1. Both feature a triple-chip compute platform, a 50MP imaging system supporting 4K video, all-day proactive sensing and a swappable dual-battery design. The flagship N1 Pro adds high-precision eye interaction, financial-grade iris-verification payment and health monitoring, with first-sale standard sets from 2,600 yuan and super-endurance sets from 2,827 yuan; the standard N1 starts at 2,218 yuan for the standard set and 2,446 yuan for the super-endurance set, with nine first-sale benefits including lens discounts, trade-in subsidies, 6-month interest-free installments and 60-day price protection.

• 2026-10-13

  Qianwen launches AI glasses N1, N1 Pro and AI ear-clip earphones[9]千问发布AI眼镜N1、N1 Pro及AI耳夹式耳机cqnews.net

  Reported: 2026-10-13

  On October 13, 2026, Alibaba's Qianwen brand launched three new Personal Agent hardware products: AI glasses N1 and N1 Pro and an AI ear-clip earphone co-launched with Bose. The N1 Pro offers real-time vital-sign monitoring, eye-based interaction and iris verification co-developed with Ant Group GPASS; after national subsidies and limited-time discounts, prices start at 2,218 yuan for the glasses and 1,099 yuan for the earphones.

• 2026-10-13

  Qianwen launches N1 and N1 Pro AI glasses[10]千问发布N1系列AI眼镜ai.zol.com.cn

  Reported: 2026-10-13

  At a Qianwen AI hardware launch event held on October 13, 2026, Alibaba's Qianwen business unit unveiled the Qianwen AI glasses N1 and N1 Pro and other devices, adding health and exercise monitoring, eye-tracking interaction, and iris authentication and payment features. Qianwen business unit vice president Song Gang said the long-term positioning is to become each user's exclusive Personal AI assistant.

• 2026-09-22

  Qwen announces accelerated development of Personal Agent at Yunqi Conference[11]千问在云栖大会宣布加速打造Personal Agenttmtpost.com

  On September 22 at the Yunqi Conference, Qwen announced it is accelerating the building of a Personal Agent and disclosed progress on connecting personal data such as health and exercise records with user authorization.

• Unconfirmed

  Shokz launches OpenFit 2 AI open-ear earbuds with Qwen LLM integration[12]韶音发布首款AI开放式耳机OpenFit 2 AI，深度接入千问大模型chinaz.com

  Shokz released OpenFit 2 AI, its first AI hardware product, an open-ear earbud that deeply integrates Alibaba's Qwen large model and is tuned for professional business scenarios such as finance and law. The earbuds support up to 8 hours of continuous recording, transcription in 49 languages, 12 industry-specific glossaries, 19 summary templates and translation in 30 languages, and have obtained China's Level 3 cybersecurity protection certification and SOC2-Type1 audit certification.

• 2026-08-20

  Alibaba announces strategic restructuring into three business segments[13]阿里巴巴宣布战略重组，整合为三大业务板块163.com

  Reported: 2026-08-21

  Alibaba announced a comprehensive strategic restructuring of its core businesses, consolidating its previously dispersed e-commerce, cloud computing, chip and AI model operations into three segments: Alibaba E-commerce Group (merging Alibaba China E-commerce Group, Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group and Freshippo), AI Cloud Computing Services (integrating Cloud Intelligence Group and chip designer T-Head), and AI Lab & Applications (combining the AI model lab, Qwen 2C business and Qwen Office). Segment reporting will change to four divisions starting this quarter.

• Unconfirmed

  Qianwen App launches paid membership tiers and video generation credit pricing[14]千问App推出付费会员与视频生成额度收费donews.com

  The Qianwen App introduced paid professional memberships for its office assistant, with three tiers priced at 19 yuan/month or 200 yuan/year for Advanced, 49 yuan/month or 568 yuan/year for Elite, and 128 yuan/month or 1,499 yuan/year for Flagship. It also introduced video generation credit pricing across five tiers, currently at promotional rates of 26 yuan for 10 credits up to 968 yuan for 500 credits, with credits valid for three months.

Showing the 10 most recent.

1. 1Alibaba Cloud – Qwenalibabacloud.com
2. 2Qwen on GitHubgithub.com
3. 3Qwen on Hugging Facehuggingface.co
4. 4Alibaba Groupalibabagroup.com
5. 5阿里巴巴与 Apple 宣布集成千问的合作163.com
6. 6千问N1及N1 Pro AI眼镜发布hy.stock.cnfol.com
7. 7千问推出Personal Agent“千问Go”finance.sina.com.cn
8. 8千问发布N1 Pro与N1两款AI眼镜，2218元起售finance.sina.com.cn
9. 9千问发布AI眼镜N1、N1 Pro及AI耳夹式耳机cqnews.net
10. 10千问发布N1系列AI眼镜ai.zol.com.cn
11. 11千问在云栖大会宣布加速打造Personal Agenttmtpost.com
12. 12韶音发布首款AI开放式耳机OpenFit 2 AI，深度接入千问大模型chinaz.com
13. 13阿里巴巴宣布战略重组，整合为三大业务板块163.com
14. 14千问App推出付费会员与视频生成额度收费donews.com
15. 15苹果确认千问接入国行Apple智能163.com
16. 16阿里巴巴重组电商与AI业务架构finance.sina.com.cn
17. 17阿里巴巴与 Apple 达成合作，将千问集成至 Apple 智能cqnews.net
18. 18阿里宣布与苹果合作，将千问集成至Apple智能news.dayoo.com
19. 19千问升级个人AI助理，推出Personal Agent“千问Go！”_原创_科技频道首页_财经网 - CAIJING.COM.CNtech.caijing.com.cn
20. 20阿里巴巴与Apple达成合作，将千问集成至Apple智能163.com