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Open-source AI, meanwhile, is expanding, with U.S. firms joining the fray [File]
| Photo Credit: REUTERS
Chinese technology giant Alibaba plans to ask major users of the next version of its Qwen open-source AI model for a share of revenue they make from the hotly anticipated offering, according to two people familiar with the company’s plans.
Like last month’s blockbuster model release from Chinese AI startup Moonshot, Alibaba’s Qwen3.8-Max model is an open-source, open-weight model, meaning that the underlying learned settings that allow developers to run or adapt the system are available for download.
By contrast, U.S. developers OpenAI, Anthropic and Alphabet’s Google have closed-source models.
Open source is often thought of as free, but tucked into the licensing terms of Moonshot’s Kimi K3 was a provision that requires anyone offering the model for sale as a service and generating more than $20 million in annual sales to work out a commercial agreement with Moonshot.