Alibaba's top AI researcher resigned immediately after Qwen's most successful model launch ever.

The day Junyang Lin announced his departure, Qwen released FOUR brand new models, including one that can run on just 7 gigs of RAM.

The models got rave reviews, including one from Elon Musk, who praised its "density of intelligence." The models were/are free to use.

Lin was seen as the most important developer at Qwen. He was also a big open source advocate. His departure led to speculation that he'd been forced out against his will. Chinese AI researchers You Jiacheng and Chen Cheng shared this view.

Why did this happen?

Some are saying it was a money thing. All of Alibaba's Qwen models until now have been completely open source, meaning that people can download them and run them locally, generating no revenue for Alibaba. Reportedly, company execs were frustrated that the open source models were not helping get users for Alibaba's revenue-generating services (e.g. Alibaba Cloud, subscription services etc).

Shortly before Lin quit, Alibaba had hired people who had worked on Google's Gemini, reportedly with an eye to increasing Daily Active Users (DAUs). If these reports are correct then we can expect that Alibaba will put more emphasis on monetizing its AI going forward. That should drive higher revenue, though it will likely mean the end of these powerful free Qwen models we've been seeing lately.

Word on the street is that Alibaba is tightening the screws to make money via proprietary cloud and API rather than open source.