FT: Alibaba Pivots from Open-Source to Paid AI — Third Closed-Source Model in Days, 80% of Hiring Now AI Roles

r/LocalLLaMA·medium signal

Financial Times reports Alibaba released its third proprietary closed-source AI model in three days, including the agentic Qwen3.6-Plus, marking a definitive shift from the open-source strategy that made Qwen a community favorite. Combined with higher cloud pricing and AI roles now representing 80% of open positions, Alibaba is building a recurring revenue engine. The r/LocalLLaMA post (163↑, 90cmts) shows community concern about the future of Qwen's open-source ecosystem, driven by intensifying competition with ByteDance in China's cloud market.