Meet Alibaba’s Qwen 2.5, an AI model claiming to beat both DeepSeek and OpenAI’s ChatGPT

Alibaba, the Chinese tech giant, released a new version of its AI model and made big claims — notably that it outperforms OpenAI’s ChatGPT and the newly ascending DeepSeek.

“Qwen 2.5-Max outperforms … almost across the board GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3 and Llama-3.1-405B,” Alibaba’s cloud unit wrote in a statement, according to Reuters. Those are OpenAI, DeepSeek, and Meta’s latest AI offerings, respectively.

There are precious few other details about the release from Alibaba. It does come at a time, however, where the AI world is scrambling amid the Chinese-owned DeepSeek rocketing in popularity. Its model is purportedly as good, or better, than its competitors despite being cheaper and requiring fewer chips.

Despite privacy concerns, DeepSeek quickly shot to the top of Apple’s app store. Amid the burgeoning popularity, OpenAI — perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not — dropped its latest release, a government focused GPT tool. This announcement came as tech stocks took a major hit due to DeepSeek. It would stand to reason Alibaba could feel the heat as well.

Wrote Reuters: “The unusual timing of the Qwen 2.5-Max’s release, on the first day of the Lunar New Year when most Chinese people are off work and with their families, points to the pressure Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s meteoric rise in the past three weeks has placed on not just overseas rivals, but also its domestic competition.”

DeepSeek has everyone in AI scrambling, it seems. Brace for even more news.