# Qwen

> **TL;DR.** Qwen (通义千问) is [Alibaba Cloud's](https://qwenlm.

- **Category:** AI / Foundation Models / Open-Source LLMs
- **Stage:** established
- **Age:** 1048 days
- **Origin date:** 2023-08-03
- **First detected:** 2026-04-16
- **Canonical URL:** https://earlyterms.com/term/qwen
- **Sources:** 8 primary URLs

## Definition

Qwen (通义千问) is [Alibaba Cloud's](https://qwenlm.github.io/) open-weight large-language-model family, shipped by the Tongyi Lab since August 2023. It spans text, code, vision, audio, image, embedding, and omni-modal models, most released under Apache 2.0 on [Hugging Face](https://huggingface.co/Qwen) and ModelScope.

The family re-entered the news in April 2026 when Alibaba [shut down the Qwen Code OAuth free tier on April 15](https://decrypt.co/364501/alibaba-shuts-down-free-tier-qwen-code) and released the open-weight [Qwen3.6-35B-A3B](https://qwen.ai/blog?id=qwen3.6-35b-a3b) the next day — a 3B-active MoE that Simon Willison showed outdraws Claude Opus 4.7 on SVG benchmarks while running on a MacBook Pro.

## Analogy

Think of Qwen as the Toyota of LLMs: a full lineup from compact to flagship, shipped globally, mostly unlocked for you to tune.

## Why it's emerging now

April 2026 was Qwen's breakout fortnight: Alibaba killed the Qwen Code OAuth free tier on April 15 and open-sourced Qwen3.6-35B-A3B on April 16. The two moves together — closing one door, opening another — define Alibaba's new hybrid posture: open weights for mindshare, paid APIs for revenue.

## Related terms

- *child:* Qwen3
- *child:* Qwen3.6
- *related:* Qwen Code
- *alias:* 通义千问
- *alias:* Tongyi Qianwen
- *competitor:* DeepSeek
- *competitor:* Llama
- *competitor:* Gemma
- *competitor:* Mistral
- *related:* LM Studio
- *related:* Claude Code
- *related:* OpenClaw

## Sources

1. [Qwen — official blog](https://qwenlm.github.io/)
2. [Qwen — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwen)
3. [QwenLM — GitHub org](https://github.com/QwenLM)
4. [Qwen on Hugging Face](https://huggingface.co/Qwen)
5. [Decrypt — Free Qwen Is Dead](https://decrypt.co/364501/alibaba-shuts-down-free-tier-qwen-code)
6. [Qwen3.6-35B-A3B launch post](https://qwen.ai/blog?id=qwen3.6-35b-a3b)
7. [Simon Willison — Qwen beats Opus](https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/16/qwen-beats-opus/)
8. [Qwen3-Embedding paper (arXiv)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.05176)

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_Generated by EarlyTerms · https://earlyterms.com/term/qwen_