Alibaba launches Qwen3.8-Max (2.4T MoE) and open-sources the Qwen3.8 family
On 2026-08-03 Alibaba launched Qwen3.8-Max, a 2.4T-parameter (95B active) MoE with 1M context, claiming parity with Anthropic's Fable 5 on several agent/coding tasks; it then released open weights for Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B (custom license, ~Aug 12-13), Qwen3.8-27B (Apache 2.0, Aug 14) and Qwen3.8-Flash-Next (Aug 26).
Key facts
- Qwen3.8-Max: 2.4T total / 95B active parameters, context up to 1M tokens (Bloomberg/Quartz via search)
- Alibaba-published comparisons: PaperBench 93.0 vs Fable 5's 88.8; IFBench 82.8 vs 63.5 (vendor claims)
- First time Alibaba open-sourced a model at this scale; 2.4T checkpoint uses a custom Qwen3.8-Max license, not Apache
- Qwen3.8-27B: dense multimodal, Apache 2.0, 262K native context extendable to 1M with YaRN (The Decoder)
- Alibaba shares rallied after the launch (CNBC)
What happened
Alibaba's Qwen team released Qwen3.8-Max on Monday 2026-08-03 through QwenCloud, calling it the most capable Qwen model yet: a mixture-of-experts with 2.4T total and 95B active parameters and up to 1M tokens of context. Alibaba's own benchmark tables showed it comparable to Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 on several coding and general-agent tasks and ahead on some multimodal/document benchmarks. Open weights followed: the 2.4T checkpoint (Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B) under a custom license, then Qwen3.8-27B under Apache 2.0 on 2026-08-14, and Qwen3.8-Flash-Next on 2026-08-26.
Why it matters
Together with Kimi K3 and DeepSeek V4, Qwen3.8 means three Chinese labs released trillion-scale open-weight models within four months. Benchmarks are vendor-reported (confidence medium).
At Apsara 2026 (2026-09-22) Alibaba said an updated Qwen3.8-Max had gone through 33 fully automated "recursive self-improvement" cycles in a month, raising its Artificial Analysis score from 40 to 45 (company claim; see 2026-09-22-alibaba-apsara-2026-qwen-4-roadmap).
Changelog
- 2026-09-29: created
- 2026-09-29: added Apsara 2026 self-improvement claim and link
Related events
- Apsara 2026: Alibaba says Qwen 4 is in training, targets 5-10T-parameter Qwen 4.5/5, reports self-improvement runs and unveils Zhenwu V900 chip ★★★
- Qwen3.8-Flash-Next: 125B MoE with only 6B active previews Qwen 4 architecture ★★★
- Moonshot AI releases Kimi K3, a 2.8T-parameter open-weights multimodal model ★★★★★
- Tencent open-sources Hunyuan Hy4 preview (770B MoE, 1M+ context) ★★★
Sources (5)
- pressBloomberg: Alibaba adds to China AI breakthroughs with new Qwen model
- pressCNBC: Alibaba shares rally after unveiling its most powerful AI model
- pressQuartz: Alibaba launches Qwen3.8-Max
- pressThe Decoder: Qwen 3.8 open weights under Apache 2.0
- officialQwen research page
id: 2026-08-03-alibaba-qwen3-8-max · updated 2026-09-29 · open in the interactive timeline