Qwen 3.5 Promises Major Improvements in Cost and Performance

Alibaba has introduced Qwen 3.5, a new artificial intelligence model capable of executing complex tasks independently (16/02). The company said the model is 60% cheaper to use and eight times faster at handling large workloads than its previous version.

Visual Agentic Capabilities Enable Autonomous Actions

The new model comes with visual agentic capabilities, allowing it to perform actions across both mobile and desktop apps. Alibaba stated that Qwen 3.5 is “built for the agentic AI era” 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.”

Competing in China’s Crowded AI Market

Alibaba released Qwen 3.5 amid strong competition from ByteDance’s Doubao 2.0, which has the largest chatbot user base in China nearing 200 million, and DeepSeek, which gained global attention last year. Earlier this month, Alibaba reported a seven-fold increase in active Qwen users after a coupon campaign in the chatbot app encouraged food and drink purchases, despite some glitches.

Benchmark Tests Show International Model Advantage

The company shared benchmarks showing Qwen 3.5 outperforms previous versions and major U.S. AI models, including GPT-5.2, Claude Opus 4.5, and Gemini 3 Pro. Alibaba did not mention DeepSeek in the announcement, focusing on improvements over its own earlier models and international competitors.

Industry Eyes DeepSeek’s Next Model

DeepSeek is expected to launch its next-generation AI model in the coming days, creating anticipation among investors and industry insiders, following the global tech share selloff triggered by the company last year.

PHOTO: REUTERS/SCMP

This article was created with AI assistance.

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