Why Alibaba Cloud has Released 100 Open-Source AI Models

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, has announced the release of over 100 open-source large language models (LLMs) as part of its Qwen 2.5 series. The company, which provides cloud computing services to businesses worldwide, made the announcement at its annual Apsara Conference.

The new Qwen 2.5 models range from 0.5 to 72 billion parameters in size and support more than 29 languages. These models are designed to cater to various AI applications across industries such as automotive, gaming and scientific research.

Eddie Wu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, said: “Alibaba Cloud is investing, with unprecedented intensity, in the research and development of AI technology and the building of its global infrastructure. We aim to establish an AI infrastructure of the future to serve our global customers and unlock their business potential.”

Since its introduction in April 2023, the Qwen model series has garnered significant attention. Alibaba Cloud reports that the models have been downloaded more than 40 million times across platforms such as Hugging Face and ModelScope, an open-source community initiative by Alibaba.

Multimodal AI advancements

In addition to the LLMs, Alibaba Cloud unveiled a new text-to-video model as part of its Tongyi Wanxiang large model family. This model can generate high-quality videos in various visual styles, from realistic scenes to 3D animation, based on text instructions in Chinese and English.

The company also announced an update to its vision language model, Qwen2-VL. This model can comprehend videos lasting over 20 minutes and support video-based question-answering. Alibaba Cloud states that Qwen2-VL is designed for integration into mobile phones, automobiles, and robots.

For software developers, the company introduced an AI Developer, powered by the Qwen model. This AI assistant is designed to automate tasks such as requirement analysis, code programming, and identifying and fixing software bugs.

Infrastructure upgrades

To support the growing demand for AI computing power, Alibaba Cloud has announced several upgrades to its cloud infrastructure. These include:

1. CUBE DC 5.0: A next-generation data centre architecture that aims to increase energy and operational efficiency through advanced technologies such as a wind-liquid hybrid cooling system and an all-direct current power distribution architecture.

2. Alibaba Cloud Open Lake: A solution that integrates big data engines to maximise data utility for generative AI applications.

3. PAI AI Scheduler: A proprietary cloud-native scheduling engine designed to enhance computing resource management.

4. DMS: OneMeta+OneOps: A platform for unified management of over 40 types of data sources across multiple cloud environments.

5. 9th Generation Enterprise Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance: The latest generation of ECS instances, which Alibaba Cloud claims offers improved performance for search recommendations and database operations.

Jingren Zhou, Chief Technology Officer of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, commented on the open-source initiative: “This initiative is set to empower developers and corporations of all sizes, enhancing their ability to leverage AI technologies and further stimulating the growth of the open-source community. We remain committed to investing in advanced AI infrastructure to foster the widespread adoption of generative AI technologies across different industries.”

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