Alibaba NYSE:BABA shares jumped as much as 5.4% in Hong Kong after the company previewed Qwen 3.8 Max, a new AI model it says ranks just behind Anthropic's Fable 5.
The release came only days after Moonshot launched Kimi K3, adding to a burst of competition among Chinese developers building high-end coding and reasoning models. Alibaba has already made Qwen 3.8 Max available through platforms including Qoder, giving developers an early chance to test it.
Alibaba runs one of China's largest e-commerce and cloud computing businesses. Its Qwen models are central to the company's effort to turn AI demand into faster cloud growth and stronger developer adoption.
The market reaction also showed how quickly leadership can shift. MiniMax fell 6%, while rival Z.AI dropped as much as 15%. Goldman Sachs expects competition in coding models to intensify but still views Alibaba as its top cloud pick because of its heavier AI spending.