Alibaba Challenges DeepSeek: New AI Qwen 2.5 launched

Alibaba launches Qwen 2.5, a new AI that outperforms DeepSeek. Competition between Chinese tech giants accelerates the evolution of artificial intelligence.

Ecommerce giant Alibaba has entered the world of AI by announcing the release of its AI called Qwen 2.5. claiming that its capabilities have left DeepSeek behind.

Gwen 2.5 is released on the first day of the lunar year, demonstrating the pressure DeepSeek has exerted not only on international rivals, but also on the domestic market.

Alibaba Claims Artificial Intelligence Outperforms DeepSeek

Alibaba posted the news on its official WeChat account talking about the artificial intelligence models modernised by Meta and OpenAI. The news claimed that the IA Qwen outperformed almost everyone in the market, notably DeepSeek, ChatGPT-4o and Llama.

DeepSeek released the first version on 10 January, supported by the DeepSeek-V3 model. Subsequently, the company launched the R1 model, which attracted a lot of attention in the AI industry, causing the shares of technology companies such as Nvidia, RIOT and MARA to plummet. The low development and operational costs attracted investors, raising questions about the huge expenses of major AI companies in the US.

DeepSeek also shook up competitors, allowing them to upgrade their AI models. Two weeks after the release of R1, another competitor, TiTok's ByteDance, released an update to its AI model.

According to analysis of R1's performance on AIME, it outperformed the Microsoft-supported OpenAI project. AIME is a benchmark test that measures how effectively AI models understand and execute complex commands.

The DeepSeek V3 model's predecessor, V2, was released in May 2024. The release triggered a price war in China. DeepSeek V2 was an open-source project that cost about 1 Yuan per million tokens. This led Alibaba's team to announce price reductions of up to 97% in its model list.

Artificial Intelligence War in China

Other Chinese tech giants have also followed the AI trend, with companies such as Baidu releasing their own version of ChatGPT in 2023. Baidu also owns shares in Tencent, China's most valuable internet provider company.

Liang Wangfeng, founder of DeepSeek, said in an interview with a Chinese media outlet that the startup was not concerned about money. Its goal was to achieve AGI (General Artificial Intelligence).

AGI refers to autonomous systems that have the ability to outperform humans in tasks that are mundane, but nevertheless valuable.

It is worth noting that while large companies such as Alibaba Group have millions of employees, DeepSeek was founded by young engineers, scientists with PhDs and graduates from top Chinese universities.

In July, Wangfeng compared the high costs and hierarchical structures to DeepSeek's more flexible management practices, pointing out that these large companies are not suitable for AI.