Alibaba tests new business model for Qwen open-source AI

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Reuters reporting indicates Alibaba intends to introduce revenue-sharing terms for some commercial users of its next open-weight Qwen model. The arrangement would require companies generating revenue by offering the model as a service to reach a separate commercial agreement with Alibaba. The exact revenue-sharing rate has not been finalized.\n\nThis would be a meaningful departure from Qwen3's current Apache 2.0 license, which permits commercial use without licensing fees. The distinction matters: Alibaba's models have always been 'open-weight' (downloadable parameters) rather than truly open-source under OSI's definition, which also requires access to training data, relevant code, and model parameters.\n\nThe precedent being followed is Moonshot's Kimi K3 license: commercial agreements are required when a company's MaaS revenue exceeds $20M in any 12-month period. Products exceeding 100M monthly active users or $20M monthly revenue must also prominently display the Kimi K3 name.\n\nSmaller companies and developers deploying Qwen in their own infrastructure would likely be unaffected. The target is large-scale Model-as-a-Service operations. This signals a broader trend: Chinese AI labs monetizing open-weight models via commercial licensing rather than pure hosting revenue.