Alibaba unveils new Qwen model, custom chips in bid to become China’s AI factory

Speaking at the Alibaba Cloud Summit in Hangzhou, Liu Weiguang, senior vice-president of Alibaba’s cloud computing unit, framed AI as a new form of manufacturing that generates revenue through “training and inference factories”.

“What we’re building is China’s AI factory,” Liu said, describing Alibaba as the only AI and cloud company in the country operating “all five layers of the full AI stack”, which bridges chips, agentic cloud, AI models, model service platforms and agentic applications.

Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

During the event, Alibaba announced Qwen3.7-Max, the company’s latest proprietary large language model designed as “a robust foundation” for AI agents.

According to Alibaba, the model excels at agentic coding, complex reasoning and “long-horizon tasks” – complex, multi-step missions requiring continuous decision-making over extended periods. The company said Qwen3.7-Max could autonomously operate for up to 35 hours without performance degradation.