Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (NYSE:BABA) has introduced a new AI model, QwQ-32B-Preview, which is positioned as a competitor to Microsoft Corp.-backed (NASDAQ:MSFT) OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model.

What Happened: Developed by Alibaba’s Qwen team, QwQ-32B-Preview boasts 32.5 billion parameters, enabling it to handle prompts up to 32,000 words.

This model is one of the few available under a permissive license, allowing for download and use, the company stated in a blog post on Thursday.

It reportedly outperforms OpenAI’s o1-preview and o1-mini models on specific benchmarks, such as the AIME and MATH tests. These tests evaluate AI models’ performance in logic puzzles and math problems.

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Despite its strengths, QwQ-32B-Preview has limitations. Alibaba acknowledges potential issues like unexpected language switches and underperformance in tasks requiring common sense reasoning.

The model’s reasoning capabilities allow it to fact-check itself, reducing errors but increasing solution time.

QwQ-32B-Preview is available on the AI development platform Hugging Face.

However, only certain components are released, limiting full replication or insight into its workings. The model’s responses align with Chinese regulatory standards, avoiding politically sensitive topics.

The development was first spotted by TechCrunch.

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Why It Matters: The introduction of Alibaba’s QwQ-32B-Preview comes at a time when OpenAI is making significant strides in the AI sector. Last month, OpenAI’s valuation soared to $157 billion following a successful funding round. 

Earlier this week, it was reported that SoftBank Group (OTC:SFTBF) has increased its stake in OpenAI through a $1.5 billion employee share buyout.

OpenAI is also reportedly exploring the development of its own web browser to challenge Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) subsidiary Google’s Chrome browser, following a push from the U.S. Department of Justice to divest it.

Price Action: Currently, Alibaba shares are up 0.27% to $86.82 in pre-market trading on Friday, following a 1.66% rise to $86.59 during Wednesday’s regular session, according to data from Benzinga Pro.

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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

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