Alibaba to Charge Big Users of Next AI Model

Alibaba plans to ask major users of the next version of its Qwen open-source AI model for a share of revenue they make from the offering. The current Qwen3.8-Max model is an open-source, open-weight model with 2.4 trillion parameters. This move is similar to other deals in the industry, such as Moonshot's Kimi K3 license, which requires partners to share revenue.

Deals like these, where US firms share revenue generated by Chinese models with the Chinese AI labs that created them, are becoming more common.