Alibaba unveils Qwen App in public beta to compete in AI market

Alibaba Group launched the public beta of its new Qwen App on Monday, marking the company’s most significant entry into the consumer artificial intelligence (AI) market to date. The app is powered by Alibaba’s latest Qwen3 model and aims to bring AI capabilities directly to everyday users.

The launch comes at a strategic time as Chinese tech giants race to dominate the consumer AI space. Baidu’s Ernie Bot has already surpassed 300 million users, while ByteDance’s Doubao has become China’s most popular AI chatbot with over 10 million daily active users.

The Qwen App is now available for free in China on iOS, Android, web, and PC platforms. According to the company, it will serve as the primary consumer interface for the Qwen series of models. An international version of the app, designed for users outside of China, will be introduced later.

Alibaba describes Qwen as a smart personal assistant capable of performing tasks beyond just holding conversations. The app offers tools for deep research, AI-assisted coding, camera-based features, and voice interactions. Notably, the assistant can generate a complete research report and create a multi-slide PowerPoint presentation within seconds using a single command.

The app also includes a unique “agentic” feature that allows users to delegate complex, multi-step tasks. For example, users can instruct Qwen to research a topic, write a detailed report, generate accompanying images, and create a presentation—all autonomously.

This launch follows Alibaba’s announcement earlier this year of plans to invest at least 380 billion yuan over the next three years in AI infrastructure, the development of foundational models, and AI-native applications.