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Alibaba adds commercial restrictions to open-weight Qwen3.8-Max AI model

Alibaba Group Holding has made the core files of its latest flagship AI model Qwen3.8-Max free for anyone to download, as the tech giant introduces…

By Samantha Johnson / August 13, 2026

Alibaba Group Holding has made the core files of its latest flagship AI model Qwen3.8-Max free for anyone to download, as the tech giant introduces new rules requiring large companies to pay for a separate commercial licence to use it.

The terms apply to users or their affiliates running a “model as a service” or “AI work assistant” business whose aggregate revenue exceeds US$50 million over any consecutive 12-month period. They are required to obtain a separate licence from Qwen before using the model or its derivatives for commercial purposes.

Internal use is exempt from the licence, as long as the software, its outputs or its underlying model capabilities are not made available to third parties.

Alibaba’s decision to release Qwen3.8-Max’s weights – the underlying parameters that encode its intelligence – marks a shift from its recent strategy of keeping its most advanced Max models proprietary.

The latest move allows most developers to use, copy, modify and distribute Qwen3.8-Max, with its massive 2.4 trillion parameters, without paying Alibaba, though they must bear the compute costs themselves.

The Qwen and Alibaba logos are seen in this illustration taken January 29, 2025. Photo: Reuters
The Qwen and Alibaba logos are seen in this illustration taken January 29, 2025. Photo: Reuters

Meanwhile, access via paid application programming interfaces (APIs) is also available. In China, the API costs 12 yuan (US$1.80) per million input tokens and 36 yuan per million output tokens. Internationally, the rates are US$2 per million input tokens and US$6 per million output tokens. At these prices, Qwen3.8-Max’s input and output rates are about 40 per cent and 24 per cent, respectively, of Claude Opus 5 from Anthropic.

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