QWEN
China's Singles Day shopping festival puts AI selling power to the test
If you are looking for evidence of how enthusiastically China is adopting AI, look no further than the country's premier month-long Singles Day shopping festival.
China's 'Lipstick King' touts AI tokens in first for Singles' Day festival
The launch is the first time AI token packages have been offered as a significant consumer product category during Singles' Day, the world's largest shopping festival originally held on November 11 each year.
First Apple Intelligence features land in China, with Alibaba’s Qwen on board
The tech giant has partnered with Alibaba to bring its Qwen model into some of the experiences. Chinese users will be able to use Qwen through Siri, Writing Tools, and Visual Intelligence, enabling text and image understanding. Users can access it by signing in with a Qwen account or through Apple, the company said in a blog post.
Cyberattacks hit NBFCs; Pine Labs Q2 profit zooms
Cyber criminals are targetting smaller NBFCs with specialised AI toolkits. This and more in today’s ETtech Top 5.
AI-powered cyberattacks siphon ₹300 crore from small NBFCs in two months
Recent cyberattacks have inflicted an estimated loss of ₹300 crore on Indian NBFC, with around 150 fraud cases reported. Focus has shifted towards identifying Chinese hacking platforms and AI toolkit involvement in these incidents. Exploiting operational weaknesses, these cybercriminals persistently launch their attacks, leading to urgent calls for NBFCs to bolster their cybersecurity frameworks to fend off further threats and safeguard their operations.
IndiaMART bets on AI to sharpen its edge, but warns of uncertain returns
IndiaMART InterMESH Ltd reported a 9.8% increase in net profit for the second quarter of 2026. The company has integrated artificial intelligence into over 20 operational functions, enhancing various processes. AI models such as ChatGPT and Claude are utilized to optimize operations and improve efficiency. Revenue for the quarter increased by 9.7%, reaching ₹429 crore, reflecting growth in the standalone business.
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Alibaba AI model secretly tried to reach Beijing server in test, rival Cohere says
Canadian AI company Cohere said on Monday one of Alibaba's Qwen AI models tried to send data to an Alibaba Cloud storage server in Beijing during a security test. The model made the attempt even though its own reasoning indicated it would not do such a thing, Cohere said.
AI was everywhere at GFF 2026. Full automation was not
Global Fintech Fest 2026 highlighted agentic AI's practical integration within the BFSI sector. Automation will handle basic tasks, but humans will retain final decision-making authority. Companies are focusing on specialised AI models and optimizing compute power for cost efficiency. Job roles are evolving, with a continued emphasis on hiring and upskilling employees.
DeepSeek pushes out updated AI model it says is faster, leaner
The firm unveiled the V4.1-Flash-1017 late Saturday afternoon with a series of posts on X saying the update had “stronger benchmark performance, faster task completion, and shorter outputs than the previous version.” The model is live across the web, on DeepSeek’s app and its platform for developers.
At 40, Tally Solutions is ready to junk its old code for an AI-first future
MD Tejas Goenka says the accounting software maker is rebuilding its core for the sixth time, even as it remains uncertain about how AI will reshape its products and the jobs that depend on them.
‘AI agents will need solid data foundation to deliver results’
Fragmented data pipeline traps AI tools inside corporate silos, Databricks JAPAC head Simon Davies tells Tanya Pandey & Surabhi Agarwal. When moving from pilot to production, organisations realise that without a solid data foundation, it is hard to understand the real implications agentic capabilities will have on the organisation, Davies said.
Nvidia-backed Reflection unveils first AI model to take on Chinese open models
Nvidia-backed Reflection AI debuted its first open-weight model named Beam on Monday, as the startup aims to compete with lower-cost Chinese models such as DeepSeek and Kimi in coding and agentic tasks.
Lessons from Chinese AI Firms on Owning Customers’ Habits
As U.S. AI firms compete in an escalating race for superior models, bigger benchmarks, and more advanced features, Chinese companies are pursuing a fundamentally different strategy: embedding AI into users’ everyday habits. The authors argue that this “habit moat” approach may prove more durable than competing on raw capability alone. Whereas Western firms position AI as a destination consumers consciously visit, companies like Alibaba integrate AI into existing routines such as shopping, payments, food delivery, and travel booking, reducing friction until using AI becomes automatic behavior. Once AI capabilities become “good enough,” marginal technical improvements matter less than becoming the default path through recurring customer tasks. The authors outline four strategic imperatives for Western leaders: focus on behavioral cues rather than feature gaps, subsidize customer behavior instead of subscriptions, embed AI invisibly into existing workflows, and optimize for repeat usage rather than first-time adoption. The central warning is stark: AI may not replace employees first—it may instead capture the critical customer moments businesses currently own.
China's AI agents can lie and scheme - just like their US rivals
Reuters examined more than 200 documents, ranging from university research papers to technical reports, and identified at least 20 studies or evaluations since 2025 describing cases where agents displayed behaviour such as deception, replication and challenging boundaries that AI experts described as building blocks for a breakout and which could become harder for humans to control as systems advance.
China's Alibaba launches international data centre push
Chinese tech giant Alibaba unveiled plans on Wednesday to expand its overseas data centres, targeting markets across Europe and the Middle East. Alibaba is targeting more than 20 gigawatts of global data centre capacity by 2032, Wu said during the firm's annual flagship conference in Hangzhou.
Alibaba plans AI model with 5 trillion to 10 trillion parameters, unveils new chip
Speaking at Alibaba Cloud's annual Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, Wu said the company's Qwen team was continuing research into model architecture and data optimisation, with the goal of completing "more complex, longer-horizon tasks" and advancing toward artificial superintelligence, or ASI.
How Anthropic disrupted bioweapons research efforts, Russian hacking, Chinese Claude misuse
A growing number of illegal hacking attempts by rogue AI agents along with concerns over the technology's risks voiced by industry insiders have increased the pressure on leading pioneers in the field, raising the prospect of more regulation.
Voice AI startup Arrowhead eyes fresh funding to accelerate international expansion
Arrowhead is betting on BFSI-led international expansion as it scales voice agents across lending, insurance, collections and customer service.
As world debates risks of AI, China closes technology gap with US
The US has outpaced China and other countries for years in AI model capabilities, research, citations and other areas. But China has been rapidly catching up as an AI superpower even as US-led restrictions have blocked China from accessing some of the most advanced technologies, including the cutting-edge chips and the machines to make them.
Should AI companies slow down development? Leaders debate safety, cost
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, xAI chief Elon Musk and other technology leaders have since joined the discussion, as concerns over AI safety meet questions around the cost of building frontier models, the rise of open source AI, and the US-China AI race. ET’s Tanya Pandey tries to answer whether calls to pace development are genuinely about greater oversight or a cover for other motives.
Alibaba's Qwen launches Qwen3.8-Flash AI model with lower training costs
Qwen3.8-Flash supports a default context window of 262,144 tokens, expandable to 1 million tokens, enabling it to handle large files, lengthy conversations and extensive research materials. It also released open-source weights for Qwen3.8-Flash-Next, allowing the developer community to evaluate an architecture that Qwen said would serve as a prototype for its next-generation Qwen4 model family.
Apple says Mac users in China can connect to Alibaba's Qwen AI service
Apple published a guide for Chinese Mac users to connect Alibaba's Qwen AI service. This integration allows enhanced Siri responses and Writing Tools capabilities for users. The arrangement aims to boost Apple's competitive edge in China's AI PC market. Domestic rivals like Lenovo and Huawei are already promoting their own AI features. This move offers Apple a locally compliant path to advanced content creation functions.
Qwen 3.8-Max launches with 2.4 trillion parameters. Don't trust the benchmarks just yet
Alibaba launched its large AI model Qwen3.8-Max with many parameters. This model supports extensive context windows and multimodal inputs for complex tasks. OpenAI also hinted at its next model, Astra, for advanced problem-solving.
Alibaba launches Qwen3.8-Max-Preview, says it trails only Anthropic's Fable 5
Alibaba has launched its new Qwen3.8-Max-Preview AI model with 2.4 trillion parameters. The preview version is available through Alibaba's Token Plan, Qoder, and QoderWork. To mark the launch, Alibaba is offering the model at 10% of the standard price. It is also offering an exclusive night-time rate with discounts of up to 98%.
Alibaba to integrate Qwen AI with Taobao, launch agentic shopping, source says
Alibaba is set to launch a new way to shop. Its AI platform Qwen will connect with Taobao. Consumers can chat with the AI to find and buy products. This aims to change how people shop online. The AI will offer recommendations and handle services. This move highlights China's advanced AI integration in e-commerce.
Head of Alibaba's Qwen AI division resigns
The head of Alibaba Group’s Qwen AI model division, Lin Junyang, said he would step down, days after updated products were released. In a post on X, he wrote “Bye my beloved Qwen” without further explanation. The jump came after Chinese tech giants launched aggressive campaigns to draw more users to their apps during the Lunar New Year holidays.
Alibaba's overloaded AI chatbot stops issuing coupons, asks shoppers for patience
Since last month, Alibaba has sought to make Qwen a one-stop shop where users can access its other apps directly in the chatbot and complete payments, much like Google integrates its Gemini chatbot into apps like Maps. However, the rollout of what the ecommerce giant calls the chatbot's agentic AI strategy has been marred by technical difficulties since the start of the coupon giveaway.
Alibaba’s main AI app debuts strongly in effort to rival ChatGPT
Alibaba's Qwen app has seen a massive surge, crossing 10 million downloads post-relaunch, signaling a strong contender against OpenAI's ChatGPT. This rapid adoption highlights AI's growing influence, with Qwen poised to integrate deeply into Alibaba's e-commerce and lifestyle services, aiming to become a comprehensive AI agent. The move is seen as a key step in benchmarking against AI giants.
Qwen AI model by Alibaba offers low-cost alternative to DeepSeek
Researchers from Stanford University and the University of Washington, including Chinese-American “AI godmother” Li Feifei, have recently published their study regarding the training of the S1 reasoning model on the back of Alibaba's Qwen 2.5- 32b - Instruct model.
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