Alibaba released a new AI model, claimed better performance than DeepSeek V3

On Wednesday, Chinese technology firm Alibaba 9988.HK unveiled a new model of its Qwen 2. According to the news agency Reuters, the company has claimed its artificial intelligence model performs better than the popular DeepSeek-V3. The timing for 'Qwen 2.5-Max' is a little weird since today is the first day of the Lunar New Year, and at this time most Chinese citizens are on holiday and spend their time with friends and family. These weird times speak for themselves of pressure created by a sudden rise in Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, which, as you see, put pressure not only on foreigners but also on domestic competitors.

"Qwen 2.5-Max outperforms GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3, and Llama-3.1-405B in almost all sectors," Alibaba's cloud unit said in an announcement posted on its official WeChat account, referring to the most advanced open-source AI models from OpenAI and Meta.

DeepSeek's AI assistant powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model was released on January 10, followed by the release of its R1 model on January 20. This has surprised Silicon Valley and led to a decline in tech stocks. The Chinese startup's reportedly low development and usage costs have led investors to question the heavy spending plans of leading AI firms in the United States.

DeepSeek's success abroad has also sparked a race among its domestic competitors to upgrade their own AI models.