Alibaba has relaunched its chatbot app — previously called “Tongyi” — under the name Qwen, calling it its “most powerful official AI assistant” for the Qwen model family. The update is more than cosmetic: the app gains deeper integration with Alibaba’s advanced Qwen models and is tuned to leverage newer agentic-AI capabilities, potentially turning it into a smart assistant for tasks like shopping on Taobao.
This move comes amid a broader price war in China’s AI market. Alibaba has slashed costs for some of its Qwen models, notably cutting the price of its large Qwen-VL (vision-language) model by 85%. More recently, it has reduced pricing on its flagship Qwen 3-Max model by up to 50%, signaling a push to make high-power AI more affordable.
These pricing cuts are part of Alibaba’s aggressive strategy to compete with both domestic rivals (like DeepSeek) and global players. By lowering the cost of entry for advanced AI models, Alibaba hopes to drive broader adoption across businesses and individual users. At the same time, the revamped Qwen app positions Alibaba to deepen user engagement beyond just enterprise use.
The timing of this relaunch carries additional weight: some analysts interpret it as a signal of rising concern in Silicon Valley about Alibaba’s rapid progress in AI. With a more powerful, cheaper, and more accessible AI ecosystem, Alibaba aims to solidify its position as a major contender in the global AI race.
