Alibaba launches two closed-source AI models as it pivots from open-source to paid enterprise offerings

Alibaba launched Qwen3.6-Plus, a new closed-source large language model focused on agentic coding, marking a strategic shift for a company that has been one of the world's leading open-source AI model providers over the past two years. Both of Alibaba's latest model releases, including Qwen3.5-Omni, a multimodal model supporting text, audio, images, and video, are proprietary, whereas their predecessors were open-source, reflecting a deliberate pivot toward generating enterprise revenue through its cloud platform. The shift is driven by intensifying competition from ByteDance in China's cloud market, with Alibaba looking to monetize its highest-performing models rather than giving them away freely.