Alibaba's Qwen family captures over 50% of global open-source model downloads (www.scmp.com)

Alibaba Cloud's Qwen family of models has achieved a remarkable milestone, capturing over 50% of global open-source model downloads as of March this year. This achievement follows the release of the Qwen 3.5 series, which reached nearly 1 billion cumulative downloads, significantly outpacing competitors like Meta's Llama and DeepSeek. According to a report by Interconnects AI, the Qwen model alone generated 153.6 million downloads in February, more than double the total of the next eight major players, including OpenAI. This development is significant for the AI/ML community as it highlights the growing dominance of Chinese models in the open-source landscape, a shift that began last summer when Chinese offerings surpassed their U.S. counterparts on platforms like Hugging Face. By asserting that Qwen 3.5 rivals leading U.S. models from OpenAI and Anthropic, Alibaba underscores the competitive landscape and its intent to position itself at the forefront of AI innovation. As open-source models continue to drive advancements in machine learning, the rise of Qwen presents implications for collaboration, development, and the ongoing evolution of AI technologies on a global scale.