Alibaba Previews Qwen3.8-Max, a 2.4 Trillion-Parameter Multimodal Model, Days After Moonshot’s Kimi K3 Open-Weight Launch
On July 19, Alibaba’s Qwen staff previewed Qwen3.8-Max-Preview, the subsequent flagship within the Qwen household. The analysis staff describes it as a 2.4 trillion-parameter mannequin, ‘second solely to Fable 5’ among the many programs it benchmarked. The preview is stay now. The benchmark desk, mannequin card, and license should not.
The July nineteenth 2026 announcement landed throughout the World AI Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai. It additionally arrived two days after Moonshot AI launched Kimi K3, a 2.8 trillion-parameter open-weight mannequin. The timing is the story as a lot because the mannequin.
This article separates what Alibaba confirmed from what it solely claimed. Every efficiency determine under carries that caveat.
What Qwen introduced
The Qwen account posted that Qwen3.8 is launching and going open-weight quickly. It referred to as the mannequin ‘some of the highly effective out there at the moment, similar to main frontier programs.
The preview construct is actual and purchasable. Access runs by means of Alibaba’s Token Plan subscription. The preview is obtainable at 10% of ordinary pricing.
Qwen developer Shuai Bai added technical detail. He described Qwen3.8 because the staff’s first multimodal mannequin above 1 trillion parameters. It processes textual content, photographs, video, and paperwork. Alibaba staff states the mannequin ought to beat Qwen3.7-Max on coding, full-stack growth, information evaluation, and workplace workflows.
Interactive Explainer
Qwen3.8-Max-Preview: what Alibaba confirmed, what it solely claimed
Status as of July 19, 2026. Toggle a truth kind utilizing the tabs above.
Total rely just isn’t usable compute. A sparse MoE mannequin prompts solely a fraction of those parameters per token.
Estimate for weights alone; add roughly 20–30% for the KV cache and runtime overhead. Active-parameter serving can be far cheaper, however Alibaba has not revealed that quantity.
Qwen3.7-Max, May 2026, closed weights. Alibaba’s historic edge has been price-to-performance, not topping a leaderboard.
