(March 4): Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s tech lead for its Qwen open-source model is standing down, a surprise move that is rattling the global developer community and casting a shadow over the tech giant’s pivot into AI. The Qwen series of large language models are among the top-performing offerings globally, and serve as the technical foundation for a suite of consumer apps, including Alibaba’s newly revamped chatbot. He also set up a team working on robotics and embodied AI within Qwen last year. Before his announcement, Lin had been working on building generalist models at Alibaba since 2022. He served as tech lead for the Qwen large language and multimodal model series and oversaw its open-source initiatives, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Source: The Edge Markets March 04, 2026 02:55 UTC