The Velocity of Chinese AI Is Accelerating
Alibaba has released Qwen3.6-Plus, its third proprietary AI model in just a few days. The article Alibaba launches Qwen3.6-Plus, its third proprietary AI model in days appeared first on The Decoder. This isn't a thoughtful incremental update—it's a carpet-bombing strategy.
Context: China's open-source strategy has begun to challenge global AI leadership dynamics. The country's deployment of smaller, adaptable AI models in manufacturing and R&D has ignited what Politico describes as a "flywheel effect" , building feedback loops through deployment across diverse industries.
The strategic implication: The last year shaped up as a big one for Chinese open-source models. In January, DeepSeek released R1, its open-source reasoning model, and shocked the world with what a relatively small firm in China could do with limited resources. Even amid growing US-China antagonism, Chinese AI firms' near-unanimous embrace of open source has earned them goodwill in the global AI community and a long-term trust advantage.
My take: Alibaba's three-in-days release strategy is the antithesis of OpenAI's "we ship when ready" approach. By treating models as commodity iterations, Chinese firms are forcing Western competitors to defend the "quality gap." It's a classic asymmetric strategy: accept lower per-model polish, gain market share through sheer velocity. Eventually, velocity plus iteration might close the quality gap anyway.