(Photo: Alibaba website)
（Singapore, 24.11.2025）Alibaba’s newly relaunched Qwen AI app has surged past 10 million downloads in just one week, giving the tech giant an early boost in its push to regain ground in the fast-moving consumer AI market. The milestone, announced in a WeChat post on Monday, helped lift Alibaba’s Hong Kong shares by more than 5% and signaled growing public interest in the company’s renewed AI strategy.
Just one week after its debut, Qwen’s rapid user growth marks a promising start for what Alibaba hopes will become its key rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The refreshed app is the centerpiece of Alibaba’s attempt to rebuild its presence in consumer-facing AI.
The Qwen app is part of a major overhaul in which Alibaba completely revamped and renamed its earlier consumer AI products — including the “Tongyi” app — under the Qwen brand. Now available on iOS and Android in China, the new Qwen app is in public beta and designed to show off Alibaba’s most advanced AI capabilities.
Alibaba says this latest version of Qwen can complete tasks such as writing full research reports and generating multi-slide presentations within seconds. These features are aimed at students, office workers, creators, and anyone who wants fast, high-quality assistance for day-to-day tasks. Although Alibaba has offered AI apps before, this marks the first time it has placed such major emphasis behind a single flagship consumer product.
Trying to Catch Up in China’s Competitive AI Race
The strong start for Qwen comes as China’s AI sector becomes increasingly crowded. Companies like ByteDance, Tencent, Minimax, and especially DeepSeek have been expanding aggressively, launching advanced AI models and rolling out new apps at rapid speed. A price war in AI services has also made the market more intense.
Alibaba, despite launching its first AI assistant in 2023, struggled to keep up. Data from Aicpb.com shows that Tongyi had only 6.96 million monthly active users in September — far behind ByteDance’s Doubao (150 million), DeepSeek (73.4 million), and Tencent’s Yuanbao (64.2 million).
The Qwen upgrade is Alibaba’s attempt to change that trend.
To rebuild the app, Alibaba pulled together a team of more than 100 developers. CEO Eddie Wu has also highlighted the company’s commitment to “full-stack AI,” which covers not just the software but also the underlying hardware, such as AI chips.
Building an AI Agent That Can Shop for You
One of Alibaba’s biggest goals for Qwen is to add agentic AI features — meaning the app will eventually be able to act and complete tasks on its own, not just respond to user questions. These features will be rolled out over the coming months.
A major part of this plan is connecting Qwen with Alibaba’s core e-commerce platforms, including Taobao. In the future, Qwen could help users search for products, compare prices, track packages, and manage shopping tasks automatically.
This strategy takes advantage of Alibaba’s strength in online retail and could draw in users who already shop frequently on Taobao or Tmall.
In the long run, Alibaba hopes Qwen will become a fully capable AI agent, similar to projects being developed by big tech companies in the US and other markets. An international version of the app is also planned.
For now, Qwen is free to use, reflecting Alibaba’s focus on attracting as many users as possible before introducing paid features. Chinese consumers tend to be less willing than businesses to pay for digital tools, so building a large user base first is critical.
Beyond revenue, having one well-designed, widely used AI app could help Alibaba stand out in an increasingly crowded industry.
Ant Group Joins the Momentum
Alibaba’s momentum comes just days after its affiliate Ant Group launched its own AI assistant, LingGuang, which achieved more than 1 million downloads in four days. The back-to-back releases show that the Alibaba ecosystem is moving quickly to strengthen its presence in consumer AI.
Alibaba is set to report its quarterly earnings on Tuesday, and analysts are expected to focus heavily on its consumer AI plans. Key questions include how Alibaba might monetize Qwen in the future, how it plans to differentiate the app from strong rivals like ByteDance and Tencent, and whether the relaunch can support Alibaba’s broader restructuring efforts.
The company has been reworking its strategy over the past year, with its cloud division — a key part of its AI infrastructure — becoming its fastest-growing business unit.
With more than 10 million downloads in just one week, Qwen’s relaunch gives Alibaba a strong start in the next phase of the AI race. But long-term success will depend on Alibaba’s ability to keep improving the app, introduce new agentic features, and convince users that Qwen can offer something different from the many AI apps already in the market.
