Alibaba Qwen 2.5: A Launch of DeepSeek Rival

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Alibaba Qwen 2.5 has entered the AI race, challenging DeepSeek-V3 with its latest launch, intensifying China’s generative AI battle.

Key takeaways:

• Alibaba Qwen 2.5 directly aims at DeepSeek, escalating China’s AI competition.
• DeepSeek-V3’s rapid deployment and low-cost training have disrupted the AI industry.
• As concerns over next-gen GPU demand emerged, Nvidia stock saw a $600 billion hit.
• Alibaba and DeepSeek face scrutiny over data security and intellectual property concerns.

Alibaba Qwen 2.5 challenges DeepSeek’s rapid AI rise

Alibaba Qwen 2.5’s launch on Wednesday marked a significant move in the Chinese AI arms race, setting its sights on DeepSeek-V3. 

After its January release, DeepSeek-R1 gained traction. Alibaba responded swiftly, claiming superior performance in a direct WeChat post. 

The burst of DeepSeek V3 has attracted attention from the whole AI community to large-scale MoE models. Concurrently, we have been building Qwen2.5-Max, a large MoE LLM pretrained on massive data and post-trained with curated SFT and RLHF recipes. It achieves competitive… pic.twitter.com/oHVl16vfje

— Qwen (@Alibaba_Qwen) January 28, 2025

The ongoing rivalry underscores China’s push for dominance in the generative AI sector, where it competes against US giants like OpenAI, Meta, and Google.

Wall Street reacted dramatically to DeepSeek-V3’s success, with investors wiping out $600 billion in NVIDIA’s stock value. 

The rapid rollout and affordability of DeepSeek’s AI raised doubts about the necessity of NVIDIA’s high-end GPUs, such as the H200 and Blackwell processors. 

Meanwhile, Meta reportedly formed “Llama war rooms” to analyze DeepSeek’s methodology and accelerate its AI efforts.

Alibaba Qwen 2.5 VS DeepSeek-V3

Alibaba’s response to DeepSeek was swift and bold. Reports suggest that DeepSeek’s unexpected success pressured ByteDance to accelerate its AI plans, with Alibaba launching Qwen 2.5 as a direct competitor. 

The competition is now fierce, with both companies competing for AI supremacy in China. However, the battle is not without controversy, as concerns over data security, potential IP theft, and the accuracy of performance metrics loom over both platforms.

AI leaders have noticed DeepSeek’s rise. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the competition, calling DeepSeek’s AI “impressive” given its cost-effectiveness. 

He assured his followers that OpenAI would respond with even better models but welcomed the challenge. 

Meanwhile, former US President Donald Trump urged American AI firms to step up, highlighting how DeepSeek’s lower costs could reshape the AI landscape.

He emphasized that reduced expenses could drive faster innovation without excessive spending.

The future of Alibaba Qwen 2.5 and DeepSeek-V3

While it remains to be seen whether Alibaba Qwen 2.5 or DeepSeek-V3 will dominate China’s AI scene, their emergence is already reshaping the global AI market. 

🚀 Big updates are here on Qwen Chat ! Visit https://t.co/FgPDTeKOuP to experience the latest improvements:

🔹 New model : Qwen2.5-Plus is now upgraded to qwen-plus-0125-exp, featuring our most advanced post-training techniques. The gap with Qwen2.5-Max has been significantly… pic.twitter.com/iQgZ6xzmlK

— Qwen (@Alibaba_Qwen) February 2, 2025

The battle between these two AI giants will continue to captivate the industry with escalating competition, regulatory scrutiny, and shifting investment trends. 

The only certainty? The generative AI landscape is evolving faster than ever.

Subscribe to our global Design Journal and stay updated with the daily design news.