Alibaba Group Holding has amassed more than 3 billion global downloads for its Qwen open source AI models in the past six months, putting it ahead of Meta and Google, according to an emailed statement from the company and data from Hugging Face.
According to Hugging Face Inc.’s “State of Open Models” report published Aug. 14, Google’s models recorded 418 million downloads and Meta’s 227 million in 2026. That leaves Qwen with a commanding lead. The company says it has released more than 460 Qwen models as open source, with the ecosystem producing over 300,000 derivative versions.
The significance of these numbers lies in what open models offer: developers can download, fine-tune, and build new applications on top of them, making adoption patterns a reliable signal of where the industry is heading. In the intensifying U.S.-China AI rivalry, download counts have become a key metric, especially as Chinese developers such as Alibaba push out capable models that are relatively inexpensive and easy to adapt. Qwen’s climb suggests that approach is gaining momentum well beyond China.
Qwen is not alone. Moonshot AI Inc., DeepSeek, and other Chinese builders are working to replicate frontier performance and close the divide with closed models from OpenAI Inc. and Anthropic PBC. Export controls aimed at restricting Chinese access to advanced chips and AI systems, such as the brief outage of Anthropic’s Fable 5 outside the U.S. this summer, have not visibly slowed these efforts.
The Hugging Face report describes Qwen as “one of the largest foundations of the open AI ecosystem,” noting that Alibaba is pulling ahead of domestic competitors like DeepSeek, Moonshot Kimi, and MiniMax, as well as American models. It also observes, “Qwen has become part of the default workflow for developers deciding what models to fine-tune and deploy.”
The strength of a broad model family is that it feeds on itself. More developers adopt the models, more derivative versions appear, and that, in turn, attracts even more users. Alibaba has reinforced this cycle by distributing Qwen through its cloud platform, reaching enterprise customers in regions from Southeast Asia to Africa, an advantage few rivals can match.
U.S. tech companies are starting to respond. In recent weeks, Meta and Nvidia Corp. have both released new open AI models as the fight for developer attention sharpens.
For now, Qwen holds the top spot among open AI models by a wide margin, according to Hugging Face data.
