Alibaba's Qwen passes 3 billion downloads, ahead of Meta and Google

Alibaba's open-source Qwen model family has passed 3 billion downloads, putting it ahead of Meta and Google in the open-model race, according to a report from eWeek. The milestone underscores Qwen's position as one of the most widely adopted open-source AI model lines, with developers building on the family across applications from chatbots to enterprise tools. Download counts have become the most visible popularity signal in the open-model race, where Alibaba, Meta, and Google are all competing to become the default foundation for third-party developers. For Alibaba, the numbers translate into ecosystem influence: more downloads mean more developers, more derivative models, and more leverage for the cloud business that monetizes Qwen. Watch whether Alibaba can hold the lead as Meta and Google ship new generations of their open models, and how much of that download volume converts into paid cloud usage.