With 60% lower costs and “visual agentic” powers, Alibaba’s latest model aims to dethrone rivals and redefine the AI landscape.
- The “Agentic” Shift: Qwen3.5 is designed to act independently across mobile and desktop apps, moving beyond simple chat to execute complex, multi-step tasks.
- Efficiency Meets Power: Alibaba claims an 8x improvement in workload processing and a 60% reduction in costs, reportedly outperforming top-tier U.S. models on key benchmarks.
- A Crowded Battlefield: The release intensifies a fierce domestic rivalry with ByteDance’s Doubao and the globally disruptive DeepSeek, as Alibaba fights to reclaim the top spot in the Chinese market.
The global artificial intelligence race has officially shifted from “chatting” to “doing.” On Monday, Alibaba Cloud pivoted toward this new frontier with the unveiling of Qwen3.5, a model specifically engineered for the “agentic AI era.” Unlike its predecessors, which primarily focused on generating text or code, Qwen3.5 is built to operate with autonomy. By integrating “visual agentic capabilities,” the model can navigate both mobile and desktop interfaces to perform actions on behalf of the user, signaling a future where AI handles everything from booking travel to managing complex enterprise workflows.
This release isn’t just about new features; it’s a strategic strike in a high-stakes price and performance war. Alibaba claims that Qwen3.5 is 60% cheaper to operate and eight times more efficient at handling massive workloads than its previous iteration. In an industry where “inference cost” (the price of running the model) is the primary barrier to mass adoption, Alibaba is positioning itself as the most economical choice for developers. Furthermore, the company released benchmarks suggesting that Qwen3.5 outperforms heavy-hitting U.S. rivals, including GPT-5.2, Claude Opus 4.5, and Gemini 3 Pro.
The timing of the announcement is far from accidental. The Chinese AI market is currently a “cutthroat” environment. Alibaba is currently chasing ByteDance’s Doubao, which recently launched its 2.0 version and boasts a massive user base of nearly 200 million. Simultaneously, the shadow of DeepSeek looms large; after becoming the first Chinese AI firm to trigger a global tech shift last year, the startup is expected to release its next-generation model in the coming days. By launching Qwen3.5 now, Alibaba hopes to blunt DeepSeek’s momentum and capitalize on its own recent growth, which saw a seven-fold increase in active users following a successful (if slightly glitchy) coupon-integrated marketing campaign.
Alibaba’s move represents a broader trend in the tech industry: the commoditization of intelligence. As “agentic” capabilities become the new standard, the winners will be those who can provide the most “capability per unit of inference cost.” For Alibaba, Qwen3.5 is more than just a software update—it is an attempt to prove that the e-commerce giant can lead the world into an era where AI doesn’t just answer our questions, but actively manages our digital lives.