Alibaba's stock price has soared sharply! "Tongyi Qianwen" fully benchmarks against ChatGPT and enters the C-end market

Alibaba Group is preparing a major revamp of its flagship AI application, aiming to make its functionality more similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT.

On the 13th, according to media reports citing informed sources, Alibaba plans to update its existing "Tongyi" iOS and Android applications in the coming months and rename them "Qwen" to echo the company's well-known AI large model.

Subsequently, the revamped application will gradually add proxy AI (agentic-AI) functionality over the coming months to support the shopping experience on major platforms such as taobao. Sources said that the ultimate goal of this move is to try to turn Qianwen into a fully functional AI agent, which is the primary goal pursued by the AI industry.

For this revamp, Alibaba has invested over 100 developers from various departments of the company in the past few months. The two-story office building has been designated as the exclusive area for the Qianwen project. This move also echoes the AI investment plan of an increase of 380 billion yuan mentioned by the company's CEO Wu Yongming last September. After the announcement, the share price of Alibaba's Hong Kong stocks rose sharply, with the increase expanding to 3%. It had previously dropped by about 1.5%, driving the Hang Seng Tech Index to turn upward.

Strategic layout shifting from B-end to C-end

For many Chinese technology companies, the commercialization model of AI mainly focuses on the enterprise market rather than individual consumers who have a relatively lower willingness to pay. Against this backdrop, Alibaba hopes to attract and retain users by integrating shopping functions and leveraging its traditional strength in e-commerce to compete head-on with products like ChatGPT. Although the revamped Qianwen app will still be free for users at present, building a large user base will pave the way for the future launch of consumer-oriented paid services.

Analysis suggests that this revamp also highlights the competitive pressure Alibaba faces in the AI consumer application market. At present, in terms of user penetration, Alibaba's Qwen lags behind ByteDance's Doubao and Tencent's Yuanbao. By launching more advanced AI models, Alibaba is working with startups like Minimax and competitors such as ByteDance to outperform industry leaders like OpenAI and DeepSeek in terms of performance.

This integration aims to establish a clear and unified brand image for consumers. At present, Alibaba not only operates the "Tongyi" series of consumer-level applications, but also has launched "Qwen Chat" with relatively fewer functions on the iOS and Android platforms. According to informed sources, the company plans to integrate these applications under the "Qianwen" brand to create a one-stop application that consumers prefer.

Insiders also said that the company plans to eventually launch the overseas version of Qianwen and bring it to the global market.

AI has become a new engine for growth

Chinese technology companies are investing funds in the field of AI. In September this year, Wu Yongming, the CEO of Alibaba, had already sketched out the blueprint for the company to launch new models and "full-stack" AI technology, reflecting its ambition at both the development of services and the infrastructure that supports the technology, such as chips.

The development of the Qwen large model began three years ago and has now become the world's number one open-source large model. The newly released Qwen3-Max outperforms international competitors such as GPT5 and Claude Opus 4, ranking among the top three globally.

The global download volume of the Qwen series models has exceeded 600 million times. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky publicly stated that the company is "heavily relying on Qwen" because it is faster and better than OpenAI models. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that Qwen has occupied the majority of the global open-source model market and is continuously expanding its share.

This is not the first time Alibaba has attempted to bring AI capabilities to consumers. The company revamped its search app Quark earlier this year, planning to turn it into an all-round AI assistant. The app will continue to provide services to users.

The latest financial data shows that AI is increasingly becoming an important growth driver for Alibaba. In the most recent quarter, the company's AI-related products achieved triple-digit growth, and the sales of its cloud business department also exceeded expectations, becoming the fastest-growing business unit in the group.

Risk Warning and Disclaimer

The market involves risks. Please invest with caution. This article does not constitute personal investment advice and has not taken into account the individual user's specific investment objectives, financial situation or needs. Users should consider whether any opinions, views or conclusions in this article are suitable for their specific circumstances. Any investment made based on this is at your own risk.