Overview
- Junyang Lin, a central technical lead for Qwen, announced his departure a day after Alibaba released the Qwen 3.5 small-model series.
- CEO Eddie Wu created a task force to coordinate group-wide resources to accelerate foundational model work, joined by Alibaba Cloud CTO Zhou Jingren and executive Wu Zeming.
- Company communications indicate plans to expand computing capacity and research hiring while maintaining an open-weight strategy for its models.
- Two sources say Alibaba has recruited former Google DeepMind researcher Zhou Hao to head post-training research, replacing the departed Yu Bowen, though the company has not confirmed the hire.
- Lin’s exit drew public messages from Qwen colleagues calling it “the end of an era,” and market coverage noted a brief 1.2% dip in Alibaba shares before stabilizing as questions about Qwen’s direction persisted.