On Thursday, Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA) Alibaba Cloud announced the release of the latest version of its large language model, which has already seen more than 90,000 deployments by companies.
Jingren Zhou, the chief technology officer of Alibaba Cloud, expressed enthusiasm about working with customers and developers to capitalize on the substantial growth opportunities presented by the latest rise in generative AI development, CNBC reports.
Alibaba Cloud introduced the new version of its Tongyi Qianwen model, Qwen2.5, significantly improving reasoning, code comprehension, and textual understanding over its predecessor, Qwen2.0.
According to a March analysis by the large language model evaluation platform OpenCompass, the latest Qwen model outperforms OpenAI's GPT-4 in language creation capabilities but could be more effective in other areas such as knowledge, reasoning, and math.
Following the global impact of ChatGPT, which launched in November 2022, Alibaba released Tongyi Qianwen in April 2023. An enhanced version came out in October.
Alibaba Cloud reported that over 2.2 million corporate users have used Qwen-powered AI services, including DingTalk, Alibaba's equivalent to Slack.
The company also launched a range of new Qwen models to the open-source community and upgraded its Model Studio, a generative AI platform, with new AI development tools.
Earlier this year, Alibaba slashed cloud service prices for international clients by up to 59%, its second significant reduction in recent months, following a price cut of up to 55% in China.
Joe Tsai, co-founder and chairman of Alibaba, had flagged the influence of U.S. technology restrictions on China's competitive edge in artificial intelligence development, indicating that China lags approximately two years behind the U.S.
Alibaba's stock has lost close to 5% in the last 12 months. Investors can gain exposure to the stock via the Invesco Golden Dragon China ETF (NASDAQ: PGJ) and the ProShares Online Retail ETF (NASDAQ: ONLN).
Price Action: BABA shares traded higher by 0.41% at $78.78 at the last check Thursday.