Alibaba’s Qwen takes on Kimi K3 with open-weight Qwen 3.8, says model is “second only to Fable 5”
Alibaba has unveiled Qwen 3.8, its latest open-weight model with 2.4 trillion parameters. The Qwen team says it matches frontier models and trails only Fable 5. A preview is available through Alibaba’s Token Plan, Qoder, and QoderWork at 10 percent of the standard price. Open weights are coming “soon.”
Alibaba says Qwen 3.8 should outperform Qwen 3.7-Max, especially in coding and complex productivity tasks such as full-stack development, data analysis, and office workflows. Developer Shuai Bai says it’s also the team’s first multimodal model with more than 1 trillion parameters and can process images, videos, and documents. No benchmark results are available yet.
Qwen’s push is likely partly aimed at disrupting Kimi K3’s momentum. Moonshot AI has promised open weights, but access currently runs through its chat app and API, turning interest into customers. Qwen’s release could disrupt that strategy. After reaching $300 million in annual recurring revenue in June, Moonshot plans to go public in as little as six months, Bloomberg reports.
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