Alibaba unveils Qwen3.5 AI chatbot for agentic era but faces crushing user demand

Alibaba unveils new Qwen3.5 model for 'agentic AI era'

BEIJING, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Alibaba on Monday unveiled a new artificial intelligence model Qwen 3.5 designed to execute complex tasks independently, with big improvements in performance and cost that the Chinese tech giant claims beat major U.S. rival models on several benchmarks. The release comes as Alibaba looks to attract more users to its Qwen chatbot app in China, a landscape currently dominated by rival tech giant ByteDance's Doubao and DeepSeek, which became the first Chinese AI firm to break through globally last year. Alibaba said Qwen3.5 was 60% cheaper to use and eight times better at processing large workloads than its immediate predecessor, adding that the model also came with the ability to independently take actions across mobile and desktop apps, or what the company calls "visual agentic capabilities". "Built for the agentic AI era, Qwen3.5 is designed to help developers and enterprises move faster and do more with the same compute, setting a new benchmark for capability per unit of inference cost," the company said in a statement. ByteDance on Saturday released Doubao 2.0, an upgrade to its chatbot app that currently commands the largest user base in China, approaching 200 million. The announcement, like Alibaba's, also positioned the new model as suited to the AI agent era. The rollout of Qwen3.5 could help further recent gains Alibaba has made in the cutthroat competition of AI models in China. Earlier this month, the e-commerce giant's coupon giveaway campaign that encouraged consumers to purchase food and drink directly in the Qwen chatbot led to a seven-fold increase in active users, despite some glitches. Last year, the e-commerce giant was one of the first of DeepSeek's competitors to respond to the startup's viral rise, releasing Qwen 2.5-Max, which it claimed was superior to one of DeepSeek's hit models. The company did not mention DeepSeek in its announcement for Qwen3.5, and the several benchmarks it published only show the new model outperforming a previous iteration and rival U.S. models GPT-5.2, Claude Opus 4.5, and Gemini 3 Pro. DeepSeek is expected to release its new-generation model in the coming days, fueling anticipation among investors and industry insiders given the global tech share selloff the company triggered a year ago. Reporting by Eduardo Baptista; Editing by Sam Holmes Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Artificial Intelligence Eduardo Baptista Thomson Reuters Eduardo Baptista is a Senior Correspondent for Reuters based in Beijing, covering China's technology, space, and automotive industries. He has led enterprise and investigative reporting on China's military-linked companies, artificial intelligence and semiconductor supply chains, as well as macroeconomic and industrial policy. Baptista has reported from China for nearly a decade and holds a BA in History from the University of Cambridge.

Alibaba's overloaded AI chatbot stops issuing coupons, asks shoppers for patience

BEIJING, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Alibaba's (9988.HK), opens new tab artificial intelligence chatbot Qwen has temporarily stopped issuing coupons due to customer overload, hampering a new campaign to promote the tool's capabilities beyond simply answering questions to assist shopping. Qwen began offering coupons to users on Friday that allow for in-app purchases from Alibaba-owned retail platforms using chatbot prompts alone. The initiative is the first phase in a 3-billion-yuan ($433 million) plan to attract more users to the chatbot during China's annual Spring Festival holiday. Since last month, Alibaba has sought to make Qwen a one-stop shop where users can access its other apps directly in the chatbot and complete payments, much like Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab integrates its Gemini chatbot into apps like Maps. But the rollout of what the e-commerce giant calls the chatbot's Agentic AI strategy has been marred by technical difficulties since the start of the coupon giveaway. Alibaba said that 10 million orders were placed within the first nine hours of the campaign. And faced with an overwhelming flood of attempted orders over the weekend, Qwen announced on Sunday on its official Weibo channel that it was overloaded and pleaded for users to give the chatbot a break. Repeated purchase prompts on Monday generated different versions of a refusal, citing user oversubscription, Reuters checks showed. "Everyone's enthusiasm for experiencing AI shopping is too high! Currently there are too many participants in 'Qwen free order', we are working tirelessly to maintain the campaign's experience," replied Qwen to one of the purchase prompts on Monday. The chatbot added that shoppers would still have time to redeem their coupons, which will remain valid until February 28. Alibaba declined to comment further on the technical difficulties. ($1 = 6.9289 Chinese yuan renminbi) Reporting by Eduardo Baptista; Editing by Miyoung Kim and Joe Bavier Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Alibaba unveils new Qwen3.5 model for 'agentic AI era'

The release comes as Alibaba looks to attract more users to its Qwen chatbot app in China, a landscape currently dominated by rival tech giant ByteDance's ⁠Doubao and ⁠DeepSeek, which became the first Chinese AI firm to break through globally last year. Alibaba on Monday unveiled a new artificial intelligence model Qwen 3.5 designed to execute complex tasks independently, with big improvements in performance and cost that the Chinese tech giant claims beat major U.S. rival models on several benchmarks. The release comes as Alibaba looks to attract more users to its Qwen chatbot app in China, a landscape currently dominated by rival tech giant ByteDance's ⁠Doubao and ⁠DeepSeek, which became the first Chinese AI firm to break through globally last year. Alibaba said Qwen3.5 was 60% cheaper to use and eight times better at processing large workloads than its immediate predecessor, adding that the model also came with the ability to independently take actions across mobile and desktop apps, or what the company calls "visual agentic capabilities". "Built for the agentic AI era, Qwen3.5 is designed to help developers and enterprises ⁠move faster and do more with the same compute, setting a new benchmark for capability per unit of inference cost," the company said in a ⁠statement. ByteDance on Saturday released Doubao 2.0, an upgrade to its chatbot app that currently commands the largest user base in China, approaching 200 million. The announcement, like Alibaba's, also positioned the new model as suited to the AI agent era. The rollout of Qwen3.5 could help further recent gains Alibaba has made in the cutthroat competition of AI models in China. Earlier this month, the e-commerce giant's coupon giveaway campaign that encouraged consumers to purchase food and drink directly in the Qwen chatbot led to a seven-fold increase in active users, despite some glitches. Last year, the e-commerce giant was one of the first of DeepSeek's competitors to ⁠respond to the startup's viral rise, releasing Qwen 2.5-Max, which it claimed was superior to one of DeepSeek's hit models. The company did not mention DeepSeek in its announcement for Qwen3.5, and the several benchmarks it published only show the new model outperforming a previous iteration and rival U.S. models GPT-5.2, Claude Opus 4.5, and Gemini 3 Pro. DeepSeek is expected to release its new-generation model in the coming days, fueling anticipation among investors and industry insiders given the global tech share selloff the company triggered a year ago.

Alibaba's overloaded AI chatbot stops issuing coupons, asks shoppers for patience

Since last month, Alibaba has sought to make Qwen a one-stop shop where users can access its other apps directly in the chatbot and complete payments, much like Google integrates its Gemini chatbot into apps like Maps. However, the rollout of what the ecommerce giant calls the chatbot's agentic AI strategy has been marred by technical difficulties since the start of the coupon giveaway. Alibaba's artificial intelligence chatbot Qwen has temporarily stopped issuing coupons due to customer overload, hampering a new campaign to promote ⁠the tool's capabilities beyond simply answering questions to assist shopping. Qwen began offering coupons to users on Friday that allow for in-app purchases from Alibaba-owned retail platforms using chatbot prompts alone. The initiative is the first phase in a 3-billion-yuan ($433 million) plan to attract more users to the chatbot during China's annual Spring Festival holiday. Since last month, Alibaba has sought to make Qwen a one-stop shop where users can access its other apps directly in the chatbot and complete payments, much like Google integrates its Gemini chatbot into apps like Maps. But the rollout of what the ecommerce giant calls the chatbot's agentic AI strategy has been marred by technical difficulties since the start of the coupon giveaway. Alibaba said that 10 million orders were placed within the first nine hours of the campaign. And faced with an overwhelming flood of attempted orders over the weekend, Qwen announced on Sunday on its official Weibo channel that it was overloaded and pleaded for users to give the chatbot a break. Repeated purchase prompts on Monday generated different versions of a refusal, citing user oversubscription, Reuters checks showed. "Everyone's enthusiasm ⁠for experiencing AI ⁠shopping is too high! Currently there are too many participants in 'Qwen free order', we are working tirelessly to maintain the campaign's experience," replied Qwen to one of the purchase prompts on Monday. The chatbot added that shoppers would still have time to redeem their coupons, which will remain valid until February 28. Alibaba declined to comment further on the technical difficulties. ($1 = 6.9289 Chinese yuan renminbi)

Alibaba's Qwen Chatbot Halts Coupons Amid Customer Overload | PYMNTS.com

By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. The issue with the Chinese tech giant's Qwen chatbot has marred the company's campaign to promote the tool's abilities beyond answering questions, Reuters reported Monday (Feb. 9). According to the report, the artificial intelligence chatbot last week began offering coupons to customers allowing for in-app purchases from Alibaba-owned retailers using chatbot prompts alone. The program is ⁠the first stage in a 3-billion-yuan ($433 million) initiative to attract more users to the chatbot during China's yearly Spring Festival holiday. Since last month, Reuters noted, Alibaba has tried to turn Qwen into a hub that lets users access the company's other apps through the chatbot and make payments, similar to the way Google has integrated its Gemini chatbot into its apps. However, the report said, this strategy has been held up by technical troubles since the coupon giveaway began. Alibaba said 10 million orders were placed within the first nine hours of the campaign. A surge of order attempts this weekend led the chatbot to announce that it was overloaded. Reuters says its checks showed that repeated purchase prompt Monday showed different versions of a refusal, down to oversubscription. Qwen has told customers that they'll still have time to redeem their coupons, which are valid until Feb. 28. Consumers are increasingly using artificial intelligence to shop, research from PYMNTS Intelligence has found. According to a report titled "Consumers Stop Sampling AI and Start Relying on It," this shift applies to one third of "mainstream" AI users. It's a trend that extends into shopping and purchasing, with nearly half of so-called "power users" saying they have replaced their old approaches with AI-driven alternatives, an increase from the 39% who said the same thing a month earlier. The same pattern could be seen among mainstream users, from 22% to 32%. "What this reveals is that growth among adopters is driven less by new users coming on board and more by a deeper integration of AI into the everyday workflows of people already using it," the report said. "Power users aren't just using AI more frequently; they're making it the default. Light users, by contrast, continue to treat conversational AI as an occasional or supplementary tool rather than as a primary channel."

Alibaba Releases New Flagship AI Model

China's Alibaba on Monday released its latest update to its flagship artificial-intelligence model, Qwen 3.5, joining a flurry of rollouts ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday. The new model features enhanced reasoning and agentic capabilities, while handling images and videos better than its predecessors, Alibaba said. The Hangzhou-based company also said Qwen 3.5 supports more than 200 languages, including many used in South Asia, Oceania and Africa. Alibaba has also released an open-source version of the latest model. The company said its performance can match that of a previous-generation model despite being around 60% smaller, a result intended to help users slash costs. This year's Lunar New Year holiday is turning into a Chinese version of Super Bowl judging by the show of force and marketing displayed by AI companies. Alibaba is one of the major participants vying to lock in users for their AI chatbots that are increasingly adept at helping humans with various tasks, from conducting complex research to booking travel and groceries. Write to Raffaele Huang at [email protected]

Alibaba unveils new Qwen3.5 model for 'agentic AI era'

BEIJING, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Alibaba on Monday unveiled a new artificial intelligence model Qwen 3.5 designed to execute complex tasks independently, with big improvements in performance and cost that the Chinese tech giant claims beat major U.S. rival models on several benchmarks. The release comes as Alibaba looks to attract more users to its Qwen chatbot app in China, a landscape currently dominated by rival tech giant ByteDance's Doubao and DeepSeek, which became the first Chinese AI firm to break through globally last year. Alibaba said Qwen3.5 was 60% cheaper to use and eight times better at processing large workloads than its immediate predecessor, adding that the model also came with the ability to independently take actions across mobile and desktop apps, or what the company calls "visual agentic capabilities". "Built for the agentic AI era, Qwen3.5 is designed to help developers and enterprises move faster and do more with the same compute, setting a new benchmark for capability per unit of inference cost," the company said in a statement. ByteDance on Saturday released Doubao 2.0, an upgrade to its chatbot app that currently commands the largest user base in China, approaching 200 million. The announcement, like Alibaba's, also positioned the new model as suited to the AI agent era. The rollout of Qwen3.5 could help further recent gains Alibaba has made in the cutthroat competition of AI models in China. Earlier this month, the e-commerce giant's coupon giveaway campaign that encouraged consumers to purchase food and drink directly in the Qwen chatbot led to a seven-fold increase in active users, despite some glitches. Last year, the e-commerce giant was one of the first of DeepSeek's competitors to respond to the startup's viral rise, releasing Qwen 2.5-Max, which it claimed was superior to one of DeepSeek's hit models. The company did not mention DeepSeek in its announcement for Qwen3.5, and the several benchmarks it published only show the new model outperforming a previous iteration and rival U.S. models GPT-5.2, Claude Opus 4.5, and Gemini 3 Pro. DeepSeek is expected to release its new-generation model in the coming days, fueling anticipation among investors and industry insiders given the global tech share selloff the company triggered a year ago. (Reporting by Eduardo Baptista; Editing by Sam Holmes)

Alibaba Rakes in Orders as It Looks to Expand AI Beyond Bots

Alibaba Group is pushing its Qwen model beyond chatbot-style interactions, a move that underscores its ambition to turn its flagship artificial-intelligence product into a consumer-facing agent. The e-commerce giant's latest effort is a $434 million Lunar New Year promotion to get draw more customers to its Qwen app, which integrates the chatbot into the wider Alibaba ecosystem and allowing it to carry out tasks on users' behalf. The payoff looks sizable so far. Alibaba said Thursday that the app attracted more than 120 million orders in the six days after the launch of the festive promotion, which offers incentives like free milk tea coupons to consumers. The move "could significantly grow the user base of its Qwen app, which would drive growth and share gain of its e-commerce and local services," Jefferies analysts said in a note this week. Market participants are closely watching global momentum around AI agents, with recent updates from Anthropic's Claude Cowork and OpenClaw on automated workflows in the spotlight. Chinese tech companies are stepping up their AI offerings too. TikTok parent ByteDance and its short-video competitor Kuaishou Technology both recently unveiled major updates to video-generation tools, while start-up Zhipu AI released an updated large-language model featuring improved agentic ability and coding ability. Peer MiniMax unveiled an open-source model on its overseas agent website. More rollouts could be on the way, as firms in China typically use the Lunar New Year to announce new products and marketing campaigns, looking to cash in on festive demand. Tencent invested 1 billion yuan, or about $144.6 million, in its Lunar New Year digital red packet giveaway campaign, while Baidu committed 500 million yuan. ByteDance is also planning a massive giveaway on its AI app Doubao for the holiday period, offering tech products as gifts and red packets of up to 8,888 yuan through lucky draw on Doubao.

Alibaba's overloaded AI chatbot stops issuing coupons, asks shoppers for patience

BEIJING, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Alibaba's artificial intelligence chatbot Qwen has temporarily stopped issuing coupons due to customer overload, hampering a new campaign to promote the tool's capabilities beyond simply answering questions to assist shopping. Qwen began offering coupons to users on Friday that allow for in-app purchases from Alibaba-owned retail platforms using chatbot prompts alone. The initiative is the first phase in a 3-billion-yuan ($433 million) plan to attract more users to the chatbot during China's annual Spring Festival holiday. Since last month, Alibaba has sought to make Qwen a one-stop shop where users can access its other apps directly in the chatbot and complete payments, much like Google integrates its Gemini chatbot into apps like Maps. But the rollout of what the e-commerce giant calls the chatbot's Agentic AI strategy has been marred by technical difficulties since the start of the coupon giveaway. Alibaba said that 10 million orders were placed within the first nine hours of the campaign. And faced with an overwhelming flood of attempted orders over the weekend, Qwen announced on Sunday on its official Weibo channel that it was overloaded and pleaded for users to give the chatbot a break. Repeated purchase prompts on Monday generated different versions of a refusal, citing user oversubscription, Reuters checks showed. "Everyone's enthusiasm for experiencing AI shopping is too high! Currently there are too many participants in 'Qwen free order', we are working tirelessly to maintain the campaign's experience," replied Qwen to one of the purchase prompts on Monday. The chatbot added that shoppers would still have time to redeem their coupons, which will remain valid until February 28. Alibaba declined to comment further on the technical difficulties. (Reporting by Eduardo Baptista; Editing by Miyoung Kim and Joe Bavier)