Alibaba has released Qwen 2.5-Max, an upgraded version of its artificial intelligence model, claiming it surpasses DeepSeek-V3, GPT-4o and Llama-3.1-405B. The launch, announced on Alibaba Cloud’s official WeChat account, came on the first day of the Lunar New Year, a time when most Chinese workers are off. This highlights the pressure DeepSeek’s rapid rise has put on both global and domestic AI rivals.
DeepSeek’s AI assistant, launched on Jan. 10, and its R1 model, released on Jan. 20, have shaken the AI industry. Silicon Valley investors are concerned about the startup’s low development and usage costs, which have led to doubts about massive AI spending by U.S. firms. The company has claimed its R1 model competes with OpenAI’s o1 on key performance benchmarks.
Read more: DeepSeek Dethrones OpenAI’s ChatGPT on Apple’s App Store in the United States
DeepSeek’s success has also triggered a reaction from domestic competitors. Two days after the R1 model’s release, ByteDance launched an update to its AI model, claiming it outperformed OpenAI’s o1 in AIME, a benchmark for assessing AI’s ability to understand complex instructions.
As Chinese AI firms race to improve their models, the competition continues to intensify. Alibaba’s latest move signals that it is determined to stay ahead in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
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