tech
February 17, 2026
Alibaba unveils Qwen3.5 as China’s chatbot race shifts to AI agents
Alibaba Group has released its newest AI model series, featuring new agentic capabilities, as competition in China's AI space ramps up.
TL;DR
- Alibaba released Qwen3.5, a new series of large language models with "advanced, dynamic reasoning" and native multimodal capabilities.
- The models can simultaneously process text, images, and video, and support new coding and agentic capabilities.
- Qwen3.5 is available as an open-weight model for download and fine-tuning, and as a hosted version on Alibaba's cloud.
- Alibaba claims Qwen3.5's performance is on par with leading models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind, based on self-reported benchmarks.
- The new models support 201 languages and dialects, reflecting Alibaba's global ambitions.
- The release comes amidst fierce competition in China's AI market, with rivals like ByteDance and Zhipu AI also upgrading their models.
- AI companies are reportedly preparing for AI agents to potentially disrupt traditional internet business models.
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