Alibaba plans AI model with 5 trillion to 10 trillion parameters, unveils new chip

The Qwen team at Alibaba intends to train a model with 5 trillion to 10 trillion parameters, according to chief executive Eddie Wu, in pursuit of 'artificial superintelligence' and to tackle 'more complex, longer-horizon tasks.' That last phrase is doing heroic labour — it is the sound of a man describing a machine he cannot yet see. Note the range: somewhere between five and ten trillion, which is what you write when your own number slightly embarrasses you and you'd like a bracket to hide in. Nobody at Alibaba has said what the thing will do, only that it will do more of it, for longer.

The commercial tells are louder than the technical ones. Wu reports that customer demand was 'exceptionally robust' and is accelerating Alibaba Cloud's revenue growth, and the same announcement rolled out a new chip, because when you're building a horse that big you'd best own the stable. Capability is now a capex schedule: 10 trillion parameters isn't a research goal so much as a procurement line. Elsewhere the word 'superintelligence' arrives with no accompanying mention of evaluation, alignment or a red team, which is one way to keep the meeting short.

Meanwhile the planet's two leading AI powers have agreed to meet again in Shenzhen in about two months to discuss dangers, which remains the diplomatic equivalent of convening a fire-safety seminar while somebody next door builds a larger furnace. Alibaba needs no permit to point five trillion parameters at a GPU cluster; it needs electricity and a deadline. If 'longer-horizon tasks' means agents that run for days unsupervised, the capability timetable and the regulatory timetable are no longer on the same calendar — one counts in sessions of Congress, the other in quarters of capex. Wu gets to ship. Everyone else gets a follow-up meeting.