Alibaba’s Qwen 3 model family has achieved a significant milestone, surpassing 600 million downloads, making it the most-downloaded open-source AI model and the top base model for fine-tuning, according to the 2025 Open Models Year in Review.
The report highlights Qwen’s strength in multilingual tasks, noting it “is regarded as the choice for a lot of problems, especially in terms of multilinguality.” This has enabled Qwen to overtake Meta’s Llama in total downloads and as the most-used base model for fine-tuning.
The success of Qwen is also reflected in Alibaba’s consumer-facing Qwen app, which launched its public beta on November 17 and exceeded 10 million downloads in its first week. By early December, the app reached 30 million monthly active users across all platforms, with 149 percent growth, positioning it as the fastest-growing AI application worldwide.
Qwen’s rise has prompted what some industry observers call “Qwen Panic” in Silicon Valley. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky stated that his company “relies heavily” on Qwen models, describing them as “very good,” “fast,” and “cheap.” Chesky added that Airbnb uses 13 different AI models, including those from OpenAI, but ChatGPT’s integration tools were not “quite ready” for production deployment.
OpenRouter’s analysis of 100 trillion tokens shows Chinese open-source models now represent nearly 30 percent of global AI usage, up from 1.2 percent in late 2024. More than 40 percent of new AI language models created on developer platforms use Qwen’s architecture, while Meta’s share has fallen to 15 percent.
The success of Qwen has also led to recognition for its developers. On December 9, Alibaba promoted Zhou Jingren, Chief Technology Officer for Cloud and head of Tongyi AI Labs—the team behind Qwen—to its 17-member Partnership. Zhou spent more than a decade at Microsoft before joining Alibaba in 2015 and is credited as the driving force behind Qwen’s development.
Alibaba plans to invest approximately $54 billion over three years in AI infrastructure. Its AI-related products have recorded triple-digit revenue growth for nine consecutive quarters. The company is integrating Qwen across its e-commerce, mapping, and local services ecosystems, developing the AI assistant into a platform that extends beyond basic chatbot functions.
