Alibaba's Qwen tech lead steps down after major AI push
By Jagmeet Singh
Published on March 3, 2026.
Alibaba's Qwen AI project has lost one of its technical leaders, Junyang Lin, just a day after the company unveiled its new Qwen 3.5 open-weight small models. Lin announced his departure in a post on X without elaborating. His abrupt departure comes as global competition among AI developers intensifies, with companies competing to build models that rival those from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. The Qwen family of models has emerged as one of China's most prominent open-weights AI efforts. The circumstances surrounding Lin's departure remain unclear.
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