Alibaba tests new business model for Qwen open-source AI

Alibaba plans to introduce revenue-sharing phrases for some business customers of its subsequent Qwen open-weight AI model, Reuters reported, citing two individuals accustomed to the corporate’s plans.

The association would require bigger corporations that generate income from providing the model as a service to achieve a business settlement with Alibaba. The precise revenue-sharing price has not been finalised, the sources stated.

Alibaba is predicted to introduce the measure with its subsequent open-source model. The firm has beforehand charged builders to entry fashions hosted by its cloud platform, whereas typically permitting clients to deploy its open-source fashions in their very own knowledge centres with out paying licensing charges.

The proposed association would differ from the licensing used for the present Qwen3 open-weight fashions, which Alibaba says are launched underneath the Apache 2.0 licence. The licence permits business use, modification, and redistribution topic to its circumstances.

Open-source versus open-weight

Open-weight fashions make their skilled parameters out there for obtain, however that doesn’t essentially imply each a part of the AI system is open or that every one types of business use are unrestricted.

Under the Open Source Initiative’s Open Source AI Definition, an open-source AI system ought to permit customers to make use of, examine, modify, and share it for any goal with out looking for permission. OSI’s definition additionally requires entry to details about coaching knowledge, related code, and model parameters.

Alibaba and different Chinese AI builders have launched giant fashions with downloadable weights. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, by comparability, primarily distribute their essential business fashions by closed techniques and hosted companies.

Alibaba’s deliberate phrases resemble the licensing model adopted by Chinese AI developer Moonshot for Kimi K3, an open-weight model launched final month. Its licence contains separate circumstances for corporations working Model-as-a-Service companies above sure income thresholds.

Under Kimi K3’s printed licence, an organization working such a service should attain a separate settlement with Moonshot when the mixed income of the corporate and its associates exceeds $20 million throughout any consecutive 12-month interval. The provision applies to business use of Kimi K3 and by-product fashions.

The licence accommodates one other requirement for giant consumer-facing deployments. Commercial merchandise exceeding both 100 million month-to-month energetic customers or $20 million in month-to-month income should prominently show the Kimi K3 identify, with exemptions overlaying inside use and companies supplied by Moonshot or licensed inference companions.

According to 2 individuals accustomed to Moonshot’s business preparations, these agreements can embrace income sharing. One supply stated Moonshot can require companions to share as much as 30% of the income concerned.

Chinese IT companies firm Chinasoft International disclosed a revenue-sharing settlement with Moonshot in a regulatory submitting final month. It didn’t disclose the proportion concerned.

DigitalOcean Holdings can be among the many corporations providing Kimi K3 and different Chinese fashions. Chief Executive Paddy Srinivasan confirmed that DigitalOcean has a business settlement with Moonshot however declined to offer particulars.

Srinivasan described the strategy as an open-source “freemium” model, the place corporations can entry software program at little or no preliminary value earlier than paying for larger-scale business use, technical companies, or earlier entry to future releases.

The value of operating open fashions at scale

Companies can obtain an open-weight model with out paying for entry to an API, however giant fashions nonetheless require substantial computing infrastructure when deployed at scale.

Kimi K3 accommodates 2.8 trillion complete parameters and 104 billion activated parameters, in keeping with Moonshot. Its mixture-of-experts structure contains 896 consultants, with 16 chosen for every token.

The model’s measurement nonetheless locations substantial {hardware} necessities on operators. Moonshot quickly stopped accepting new Kimi K3 subscriptions in July after saying utilization had positioned stress on its out there GPUs, whereas Reuters reported that comparatively few customers had been anticipated to self-host a model of that scale due to the infrastructure required.

Alibaba is utilizing an identical architectural strategy with Qwen3.8-Max. The model accommodates about 2.4 trillion parameters however prompts round 95 billion parameters for every request, in keeping with Reuters.

Moonshot says its mixture-of-experts design improves scaling effectivity by activating solely a subset of the model’s consultants for every token, quite than the complete model.

Cloud suppliers can cost for internet hosting and inference, whereas AI infrastructure corporations can generate income from deployment and optimisation companies.

Dan Fu, vice chairman of kernels at Together AI, stated corporations offering AI companies can differentiate their choices by areas resembling extra environment friendly token use and deployment optimisation.

“At the applying layer, there’s worth on the market for how you employ it, the way you truly get the fashions and the tokens to do one thing helpful,” Fu stated.

Model growth presents a separate value problem. Research involving Epoch AI and Stanford researchers estimated that the price of essentially the most compute-intensive coaching runs had risen by about 2.4 instances a yr since 2016, whereas Stanford’s 2025 AI Index discovered that the value of accessing fashions at a given functionality stage had fallen sharply.

At printed API costs on the time of launch, Kimi K3 was priced at about one-third of Anthropic’s Fable model primarily based on listed enter and output token charges. Pricing is just one a part of the deployment value, notably for corporations operating fashions on devoted infrastructure or dealing with excessive volumes of requests.

These prices sit alongside the licensing preparations being examined by model builders. Alibaba already prices builders that entry Qwen by Alibaba Cloud. The proposed association would additionally permit it to gather income from some corporations deploying Qwen independently on their very own infrastructure or by third-party companies.

Moonshot has already connected business circumstances to Kimi K3 whereas protecting its model weights out there for obtain. DigitalOcean and Chinasoft International have each disclosed business preparations with Moonshot, though the monetary phrases haven’t been made public.

The business preparations are growing alongside wider tensions between China and the US over AI expertise. The White House has accused Moonshot of utilizing expertise taken from Anthropic whereas growing its fashions, an allegation Chinese officers have rejected.

Interest in releasing fashions with downloadable weights is just not restricted to Chinese builders. Thinking Machines Lab, the San Francisco AI firm based by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, launched its first open-source model final month.

Lin Qiao, chief government and co-founder of Fireworks AI, stated there was no basic technical barrier stopping US builders from releasing extra succesful open-source fashions. Fireworks AI works with fashions from builders together with Moonshot, though Qiao declined to debate its business preparations.

Alibaba has not publicly introduced the ultimate licence for its subsequent Qwen model or the revenue-sharing share it plans to hunt from giant business customers.

(Photo by: Alibaba)

See additionally: Alibaba, DeepSeek push China’s AI model race towards lower costs

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