Alibaba Faces Fierce AI Talent Poaching As Rivals Lure Top Qwen Model Engineers

Alibaba Group BABA has become a prime target in China’s artificial intelligence (AI) talent war as rival tech giants poach senior experts from its Tongyi Lab, the developer of the widely used open-source Qwen models.

Top departures include Yan Zhijie, an early member of Alibaba’s Damo Academy and former head of Tongyi’s speech lab, who left in February and recently joined JD.com’s JD Explore Academy after a brief stint at Tencent TCEHY.

Bo Liefeng, former head of Tongyi’s applied vision division, also left to join Tencent’s Hunyuan AI model team, SCMP reported on Friday.

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The exits follow earlier talent losses, including key algorithm engineer Zhou Chang, who left for ByteDance last year, triggering a non-compete lawsuit from Alibaba.

The company’s Qwen models have surpassed 400 million global downloads, spawning 140,000 derivative models.

Alibaba recently launched its “Star Top Talent Recruitment and Development Programme” to attract elite AI researchers, mirroring an aggressive industry-wide push by ByteDance, Tencent, and JD.com to secure top scientists and engineers in a recruitment race comparable to that of U.S. tech leaders like Meta Platforms META, Alphabet GOOGL Google, and OpenAI.

Alibaba Group stock has gained 42% year-to-date, driven by advancements in AI and its strategic partnership with Apple AAPL. Alibaba co-founder and Chair Joe Tsai open-sourced its Qwen models to drive demand for AI applications and cloud computing. The company committed at least 380 billion yuan ($52 billion) in cloud computing and AI infrastructure over the next three years.

Price Action: BABA shares are trading lower by 0.01% to $120.34 premarket at last check on Monday.

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