Is Alibaba setting up Qwen to be an AI super app?

• Alibaba aims to make Qwen an AI super app that works across devices and services.
• Alibaba formed a new unit to bring its Qwen chatbot into more parts of daily life.

Alibaba is reorganising its consumer-facing AI work as it looks to bring the Qwen chatbot into daily life and position it for broader use across devices and services. The company sees Qwen as the centre of its next phase in consumer AI and has created a new unit to support that direction.

A new push to bring Qwen into daily life

As reported by the South China Morning Postthe new Qwen Consumer Business Group, led by Alibaba vice-president Wu Jia, will manage a wide mix of products. These include the Qwen chatbot app, the Quark AI assistant and cloud drive, UC Browser, the Shuqi online reading platform, and Alibaba’s AI hardware.

The change brings together the former Intelligent Information Business Group and Intelligent Connectivity Business Group, which oversaw products such as the TmallGenie smart speaker and Alibaba’s AI glasses. Both were already under Wu’s leadership.

At the core of the reorganisation is Alibaba’s plan to grow Qwen into what the company calls an AI “super app.” The idea goes beyond a standard chatbot. A super app in China is usually a single app that brings together many everyday tasks such as shopping, payments, travel bookings, and messaging. The rise of AI may shift this model toward a more personalised system built around an intelligent agent that can handle tasks across apps and devices.

Alibaba wants Qwen to support more scenarios, from smart glasses to personal computers and cars. If these plans work, Qwen could serve as a hub across parts of Alibaba’s ecosystem, including e-commerce, maps, navigation, and local services.

A growing base of open-source users

China’s AI sector has seen sharp growth in open-source adoption this year. A study by OpenRouter and Andreessen Horowitz found that Chinese open-source AI models now make up nearly 30 per cent of global use, a steep rise from about 1 per cent late last year. The report pointed to Alibaba’s Qwen, DeepSeek’s V3, and Moonshot’s Kimi as key drivers behind that surge. It also found that Chinese prompts are now the second-most used language worldwide, with a share far above the language’s presence on the internet.

The report said China has become a major force in global AI development, backed by fast release cycles and steady upgrades from companies such as Alibaba Cloud. It added that the open-source field has become more fragmented, with no single model holding more than a quarter of global traffic. That shift has created room for several Chinese models to gain traction at the same timewhich may help consumer-facing apps like Qwen collect more users across devices and platforms.

Building an AI app that can do more than chat

The Qwen app, a revamped version of the older Tongyi app, relaunched in November and marks Alibaba’s most focused push so far into consumer AI. The company is entering a crowded market of global and domestic rivals. Stand-alone chatbot apps from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and xAI already compete for users, along with Chinese challengers such as ByteDance, Tencent, Baidu, DeepSeekand Moonshot.

Many of these companies are also working to position their models as daily-use assistants, raising the stakes for Alibaba’s super app plans.

Qwen offers a wide set of functions. It can answer queries, transcribe audio, create images and videos, run research tasks, and build slide decks. According to Alibaba, the app reached more than 10 million downloads in its first week of public beta, outpacing early adoption of ChatGPT and DeepSeek.

Alibaba Cloud has played a central role in building and promoting the Qwen model family over the past two years. The company supported an open-source strategy during the global surge in AI use, allowing developers to use, adjust, and share its models. This made Qwen one of the most widely deployed open-source models worldwide and placed Alibaba at the centre of China’s fast-growing model ecosystem.

How Alibaba sees Qwen’s next stage

During an earnings call following the company’s third-quarter results, group CEO Eddie Wu Yongming said Alibaba was moving forward on both the business and consumer sides of AI. For enterprises, he described efforts to build “full-stack” AI capabilities, which include high-performance infrastructure, foundation models, and development tools.

For consumers, he said the goal was to make Qwen “the AI entry for everyday life” through links to e-commerce, maps, navigation, and other services.

Alibaba also reported that cloud-computing revenue rose 34 per cent year on year to 39.8 billion yuan (US$5.6 billion) in the second quarter. AI-related products saw triple-digit growth for the ninth straight quarter.

As Alibaba reshapes its AI divisions and expands Qwen’s functionsthe company is aiming to move beyond a collection of tools and create a single point where users can handle tasks, find information, and connect with services.

The rapid rise of Chinese-built open-source models adds further momentum behind that direction. Whether Qwen can become an AI super app will depend on how well it scales across devices, wins users in a crowded field, and connects the many parts of Alibaba’s ecosystem into a simple, useful experience.

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is part of TechEx and is co-located with other leading technology eventsclick here for more information.

AI News is powered by TechForge Media. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars here.