According to Bloomberg, in January this year, the low-cost and high-performance AI models launched by China’s AI company DeepSeek caused a sensation in the global technology community and brought immense urgency to Alibaba, one of China’s tech giants. To quickly catch up with this technological breakthrough, engineers at Alibaba even canceled their vacation during the most important traditional Chinese festival — Spring Festival, choosing to stay overnight at the company and fully devote themselves to AI development.

In his speech at VivaTech, a Paris-based tech conference held on Wednesday, Chairman Cai Hongxin vividly described this "race against time." He said that when DeepSeek released its R1 model, Alibaba internally realized it was lagging behind in the AI field. In response to this challenge, the engineering head of the company made an immediate decision to cancel the Spring Festival holiday and required all engineers to stay in the office, even sleeping in the office, to develop as fast as possible.

Tongyi Qwen Series Models

"Within weeks, we launched our own version — the Qwen series models, which performed quite well and were highly competitive," Cai Hongxin's words not only demonstrated Alibaba's rapid response capability in the AI field but also reflected the increasingly intense competitive landscape in China's tech industry.

Spring Festival is one of the most important holidays in China, usually a time for family reunions. This year's Spring Festival holiday lasted from late January to early February, but for Alibaba's AI engineers, it meant a race against time for a tough R&D battle.

Following this, Alibaba quickly rolled out a series of new AI models and further shifted its business focus towards artificial intelligence (AI) and general artificial intelligence (AGI). To support this strategic transformation, Alibaba also pledged to invest more than 380 billion RMB (approximately 53 billion USD) over the next three years to build AI infrastructure, including data centers.

It is worth noting that earlier this year, Alibaba reached a cooperation agreement with Apple to provide AI technical support for iPhones. This cooperation also drew attention from U.S. officials, highlighting the increasingly important role of Chinese tech companies in the global AI competition landscape.