March 6, 2025- Chinese tech giant Alibaba released its latest artificial intelligence reasoning model named Tongyi Qianwen QwQ-32B on Thursday. The company claims that this 32 billion-parameter model has the potential to outperform rivals like DeepSeek-R1 and OpenAI.
QwQ-32B is accessible through Qwen Chat, Alibaba’s AI chatbot. It has demonstrated strong performance in areas like coding, mathematical reasoning, and general problem-solving, outperforming OpenAI in certain benchmarks. The news sent Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares up by more than 8% and helped boost Hang Seng’s China Enterprise index.
Alibaba first introduced its ChatGPT-equivalent service Tongyi Qianwen in 2023. Similarly, it launched another model, Qwen 2.5 Max, in January. The company didn’t stop there and pledged to create more advanced models following the success of DeepSeek.
The latest Qianwen QwQ-32B performed comparably to DeepSeek-R1 in the AIME24 evaluation set. It even outperformed OpenAI-01-mini during the mathematical test. Another advantage of QwQ-32B is its significantly lower deployment and usage costs. Businesses and developers can easily deploy it on local devices using consumer-grade hardware.
Qianwen QwQ-32B model is designed to improve reasoning capabilities. This makes it applicable across sectors, including enterprise applications. Its performance and efficiency can position it as a strong competitor to advanced models like DeepSeek’s R1.
Alibaba has made Qianwen QwQ-32B open-source, allowing businesses to use and customize the model for their specific needs. This openness can challenge existing leaders like DeepSeek, Google, and OpenAI, fostering innovation and competition.
With its advanced reasoning capabilities, efficiency, and open-source nature, Qianwen QwQ-32B is poised to significantly impact the enterprise AI landscape. According to Coherent Market Insights (CMI), the global enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) industry is set to record a CAGR of 34.1% during the forecast period.
“Alibaba’s latest AI model could democratize access to advanced AI, drive innovation, and enhance efficiencies, positioning enterprise AI as a core component of digital transformation strategies worldwide, says a senior analyst at CMI.”
Qianwen QwQ-32B will support China’s AI ecosystem, providing an alternative to Western AI models. It will also encourage other companies to develop advanced AI models, leading to growth of the enterprise artificial intelligence industry.
The Chinese government has pledged to significantly increase its support for industries like artificial intelligence, 6G telecom, and humanoid robots. This will create a conducive environment for companies like Alibaba to introduce novel technologies. More AI startups can bloom in nations like China amid favorable government support.
