Days earlier, Moonshot AI set the record for the largest open-weight AI model yet.

Alibaba shares surged more than 3.5pc in overnight trading on Monday (20 July) after the Chinese giant unveiled Qwen3.8-Max in preview – supposedly “second only to [Anthropic’s] Fable 5”.

With 2.4trn parameters, this latest AI model in Alibaba’s flagship series Qwen is expected to go open-weight soon. It is available to try out on Alibaba’s Token Plan, Qoder and QoderWork.

Days earlier, Alibaba’s Chinese contemporary Moonshot AI made a splash unveiling Kimi K3 which set the record for the largest open-weight AI model yet with 2.8trn parameters.

Interest in the model surged much higher than expected following its launch, as new users swarmed to try the model forcing Moonshot to pause on taking new subscriptions on Sunday (19 July).

Across cited benchmarks, K3 trailed behind only OpenAI’s new GPT-5.6 Sol and Anthropic’s Fable 5, while outperforming them in certain coding and general agent tasks at a cheaper price.

The latest launches from Chinese AI companies have sent shares of rival AI model maker Zhipu down by more than 45pc in the past five days.

MiniMax, which went public earlier this year shortly following Zhipu, has also lost nearly 13pc of its share value in the past five days and more than 61pc of its value over the past month.

This, as Moonshot AI reportedly plans to go public as early as in six months, riding on the growing wave of interest in the cheaper Chinese AI models, despite efforts from Washington to curb semiconductor exports to the country.

US curbs on semiconductor exports to China over recent years has seemed to have pushed China to focus on its own chip capabilities. Earlier this year, the country reportedly began restricting overseas travel for its top AI professionals to ensure its talent remains beneficial at home.

Meanwhile, US lawmakers are urging the Trump administration to ban US companies from buying memory chips from Chinese semiconductor developers.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.