TechFlow news: According to a report published by U.S.-based AI tracking firm Interconnects AI on April 10, Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen series of models accounted for over 50% of global open-source model downloads as of March 2026, with cumulative downloads reaching 942.1 million—far surpassing competitors such as Meta’s Llama and DeepSeek. In February alone, Qwen downloads totaled 153.6 million—exceeding the combined downloads of the next eight major vendors.
The report notes that Qwen’s dominant position stems from the widespread adoption of its smaller-parameter versions (under 10 billion parameters), which enable developers to freely customize and deploy models at low cost. Since the release of Qwen 2.5 in September 2024, Chinese models have begun outpacing mainstream U.S. open-source models like Llama; the launch of Qwen 3.5 in February this year further solidified its lead.
Meanwhile, open-source strategy has become a key battleground in the U.S.-China AI competition. Meta has abandoned its open-source approach this year, instead releasing the closed-source flagship model Muse Spark. Similarly, Chinese vendors—including Alibaba Cloud and Zhipu AI—have shifted some of their latest models to closed-source licensing to expand direct commercialization channels.
