Alibaba Cloud captured more than 50 per cent of global open-source model downloads as of March following the release of its Qwen 3.5 model series, a new report has found.

The finding underscores the dominance of Chinese models in the global open-source artificial intelligence landscape, though some US companies including OpenAI and Nvidia are also making early gains.

Qwen reached nearly 1 billion cumulative downloads by March, far surpassing rivals like Meta Platforms’ Llama and DeepSeek, according to researchers at Interconnects AI, a US-based newsletter tracking the global open-source AI landscape, in a report released on Wednesday.

Citing figures from developer platform Hugging Face, the researchers said Qwen alone generated 153.6 million downloads in February, more than double the combined total from the next eight major players, including Meta, DeepSeek and OpenAI.

Alibaba Cloud open-sourced Qwen 3.5, its latest flagship model series, in February, saying it was on par with leading US models from the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic. Alibaba Cloud is the AI and cloud computing unit of Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the South China Morning Post.

Chinese models overtook their US counterparts last summer to become the most downloaded open-source models on Hugging Face. The shift away from popular US models such as Llama began in September 2024 with the release of Qwen 2.5, the report said.