There’s been an escalation in the generative AI large language model “wars” as Alibaba Qwen 2.5 launched Wednesday. This latest AI salvo from China-based Alibaba is directly aimed at its in-country rival DeepSeek, which launched its own AI — DeepSeek-V3 — in December and its R1 version earlier this month.

Max's release points to the pressure DeepSeek's meteoric rise in the past three weeks has placed on overseas rivals and domestic competition.

Analysts say China’s AI investment is just beginning to pay off, with more firms expected to launch their own models soon.