Alibaba splits Qwen into open and proprietary tiers

Alibaba released Qwen3.6 in April 2026, a 35-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model with 3 billion active parameters, under the Apache 2.0 license. It kept the more capable Qwen3.6-Plus and Qwen3.5-Omni proprietary, reachable only through Qwen’s apps and Alibaba Cloud.

Why it mattered The split moved Qwen away from releasing its most capable models openly, matching a wider turn among Chinese AI companies toward closed, revenue-generating flagships.