Story
Did Alibaba just kneecap its powerful Qwen AI team?
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Overview
Key figures from Alibaba's Qwen AI team, known for their extensive contributions to open source generative models, have departed following the release of the Qwen3.5 small model series. The release received public acclaim from Elon Musk for its notable intelligence density.
Summary from venturebeat.com.
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Hacker News · venturebeat.com
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Based on 5 sampled comments from this thread. Analyzed 2026-03-04.
- Praise: The Qwen team demonstrated exceptional capabilities in NLP and LLMs, indicating a strong potential for future advancements in AI applications.
- Praise: Elon Musk's praise for Qwen's efforts highlights the team's influence and innovation in the AI landscape, suggesting they are on the cutting edge of technology.
- Concern: The firing of key team members from Qwen raises serious concerns about the future of their projects, potentially leading to a decline in innovation and performance.
- Concern: Corporate politics appear to undermine the Qwen team's success, risking the loss of multi-modal capabilities that could have advanced Alibaba's AI offerings significantly.
- Concern: There is a fear that Qwen4 will not meet expectations, similar to Llama 4, suggesting a lack of confidence in the team's ability to deliver under current circumstances.