In This Article:
Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) just made a power move in AI, and investors are paying attention. The stock surged 8.39% in Hong Kong, hitting a 52-week high, after the company unveiled QwQ-32Ban AI reasoning model it claims can go toe-to-toe with DeepSeek's game-changing R1. The U.S.-listed shares also gained in premarket trading. With 32 billion parameters, QwQ-32B isn't chasing sheer sizeit's focused on efficiency, outperforming bigger models in math and coding while consuming fewer resources. AI has already been a key growth engine for Alibaba's Cloud Intelligence division, and this latest innovation could accelerate that momentum. Analysts are now eyeing the stock's next leg up, fueled by AI's expanding role in Alibaba's ecosystem.
This breakthrough comes as China ramps up AI investments, with government backing for next-gen technologies like humanoid robots and 6G. Alibaba's Qwen Chat, which now includes QwQ-32B alongside its most advanced Qwen2.5-Max, is bringing high-powered AI straight to users. But Alibaba isn't the only one making wavesChinese startup Monica just dropped an AI agent called Manus, which reportedly outperformed OpenAI's Deep Research in key benchmarks. A demo of Manus has already gone viral, drawing over 280,000 views in a day and sparking demand for early access. The AI arms race is heating up fast, and China's tech giants aren't holding back.
The bigger picture? AI's rapid evolution is shifting the game from training to real-world applications, and companies optimizing for speed, cost, and performance are set to win. Investors have seen this beforeNvidia's AI boom started with training chips, but the real money is in inference computing, where AI models get deployed at scale. That's exactly where Alibaba is heading. As AI becomes a commodity, the winners won't just be those with the biggest modelsbut the ones that make them work smarter, faster, and cheaper. Alibaba's latest AI push might just put it ahead of the curve.
This article first appeared on GuruFocus.