While DeepSeek-R1 operates with 671 billion parameters, QwQ-32B achieves comparable performance with a much smaller footprint.

Albibab Cloud’s latest model rivals much larger competitors with just 32 billion parameters in what it views as a critical step towards AGI.

Hong-Kong listed shares (HK:9988) jumped over 8% today, after the company launched its new open-source AI (artificial intelligence) model, which challenges DeepSeek’s R1 model. Alibaba’s AI unit, Qwen,

Alibaba’s Hong Kong shares surged 74% in 2025, driven by AI expansion, strong earnings, and renewed government support. Its QwQ-32B model challenges DeepSeek, fueling China’s tech rally. Despite economic uncertainties,

Alibaba boasted that its new QwQ-32B model “almost entirely surpasses OpenAI-o1-mini” while matching the performance of DeepSeek’s R1, currently considered one of the strongest open-source reasoning models available.

The news prompted Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares to close 8% higher on the day and helped boost the Hang Seng’s China Enterprises Index. The release of Alibaba’s new AI model comes a day after the launch of the “general AI agent” Manus by another Chinese company,

Alibaba shares were rising after the Chinese firm said the latest version of its Qwen AI was comparable with DeepSeek’s R1 that shocked the world in January.