Alibaba Group Holding intends to unveil next week a new business plan that will require significant corporate users of its upcoming open-source Qwen AI model to split some of the software's profits, according to a report.
Chinese tech giant Alibaba intends to ask significant users of the upcoming edition of its Qwen open-source AI model for a portion of the money they generate from the much-awaited product, according to a report by Reuters.
Similar to the popular model released by Chinese AI firm Moonshot last month, Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Max model is open-source and open-weight, which means that developers can operate or modify the system by downloading the underlying learned parameters. In contrast, closed-source models are produced by American developers OpenAI, Anthropic, and Alphabet's Google,
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Although open source is frequently thought of as free, Moonshot's Kimi K3 licensing terms included a clause requiring anyone selling the model as a service and bringing in more than $20 million annually to negotiate a business deal with Moonshot.
The company intends to use a similar move for its open-source model next week, the report said.
Alibaba has so far charged developers for using its models when they are hosted on its own cloud computing platform, but most of its open-source products are free to use in customers' own data centers.
The proposals demonstrate how Chinese AI companies, which have stunned markets by releasing open-source models that are almost as powerful as those from OpenAI and Anthropic, are coming to a consensus on a business strategy in an effort to overtake their American competitors.
Even though the White House has accused Moonshot of stealing technology from Anthropic, agreements are emerging wherein US companies split the profits from Chinese models with the Chinese AI labs that developed them. That claim has been dismissed by Chinese officials as untrue.
Moonshot's partners must split revenue in accordance with the Kimi K3 license; one of them stated that Moonshot may demand a 30% revenue share. Alibaba also intends to demand a revenue split; however, the exact amount is still up for debate, according to the report.
Chinese IT services business Chinasoft International revealed a revenue-sharing arrangement with Moonshot in a regulatory filing last month, but it did not provide the ratio.
Chinese AI companies are using Silicon Valley's standard operating procedure: Provide software for free or very little at first, then charge for substantial commercial use and other services.
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