Alibaba AI models hit 3 billion downloads, passing Meta, Google

Alibaba's Qwen open-weight models achieved over 3 billion global downloads in six months, establishing it as the world’s No. 1 AI model by surpassing Meta and Google according to Hugging Face Inc. This rise indicates that Chinese developers are building robust ecosystems and gaining traction against US rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic PBC, despite facing export controls.