Exploring Alibaba Qwen 2.5 model: A Potential DeepSeek Rival
JAN 31, 2025

JAN 31, 2025
So, it looks like the AI race is really heating up, especially with Alibaba’s latest move. On January 29, 2025, Alibaba dropped its latest generative AI model, Qwen 2.5, and it’s making waves. Why? Well, it’s aimed directly at China’s own AI giant, DeepSeek, which has already made a big splash with its own models. DeepSeek released its DeepSeek-V3 in December, followed up with the R1 version earlier this month.
Talk about keeping the competition on their toes! What makes DeepSeek-V3 stand out from the crowd of AI heavyweights—like Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Llama, and Perplexity—is its speed and efficiency. While other big players took their time, DeepSeek-V3 was designed and launched much quicker. Even more impressive is that it needed far less computing power to train, setting it apart as a more resource-efficient option in the competitive landscape of AI models.
Artificial intelligence continues to evolve astonishingly, and Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen AI is another horse in this race. Whether you're a developer, business owner, or AI enthusiast, this next-gen model is being discussed for all the right reasons.
Alibaba AI chatbot named Qwen, specifically the 2.5-Max version, is pushing the boundaries of AI innovation. Designed with advanced reasoning, coding capabilities, and multilingual processing, this China’s new AI model is not just another Alibaba LLM. It’s a powerful tool with a clear edge over other AI systems, excelling where it matters most.
Qwen AI’s introduction into the market offers an affordable yet high-performance alternative to existing AI models, with its 2.5-Max version being beautiful for those looking for cutting-edge technology without the steep costs. You might be wondering, “Is Qwen open source?” We’ll go through whether Qwen 2.5 max is open source or not soon.
It seems they’re keeping a close eye on the competition, especially DeepSeek V3. The V3 model has upgraded algorithm architecture and delivers results on par with other large language models. However, what really sets it apart is how cost-effective it is.
The release of Qwen 2.5-Max by Alibaba Cloud on the first day of the Lunar New Year is noteworthy for its unusual timing. This launch occurred when most Chinese people celebrated the holiday and spent time with their families.
DeepSeek managed to train the V3 for less than $6 million, which is pretty impressive considering the tech involved. They used Nvidia H800 GPU chips, which emerged almost two years ago—practically ancient in the fast-moving tech world. Despite using this older tech, DeepSeek’s V3 still packed a punch.
After its January 20 release, the DeepSeek-R1 AI assistant, which runs on the V3 model, shot to the top of Apple’s Top Free Apps category. That's a profound statement of success! All in all, Alibaba Qwen 2.5 max launch seems like it’s trying to take on this new wave of efficient and powerful AI.
The reality of DeepSeek’s rapid rise really hit home on Wall Street. Investors lost confidence in the high price tags of next-gen GPUs, like Nvidia’s H200 and Blackwell processors. The reason? DeepSeek’s ability to roll out an advanced AI model like V3 so quickly and cheaply made people question whether all those expensive new GPUs would even be necessary going forward.
Meta was also feeling the heat as they’ve been scrambling to set up what they’ve called “Llama war rooms” to figure out how DeepSeek managed to pull off its fast and affordable rollout. They’re reportedly reverse-engineering the entire process to figure out how to replicate this success. The AI race is no joke, and DeepSeek’s latest moves seem to have shaken up the whole industry.
Alibaba’s Qwen models, particularly the Qwen 2.5 series, are open-source. The Qwen 2.5-72B-Instruct model has earned the distinction of being the top open-source model on the OpenCompass large language model leaderboard, highlighting its performance across multiple benchmarks.
Furthermore, Alibaba Cloud has made over 100 open-source Qwen 2.5 multimodal models available to the global community, demonstrating their dedication to providing these AI technologies for customization and deployment.
While it's easy to think Qwen 2.5 max is open source because of Alibaba’s earlier open-source models like the Qwen 2.5-72B-Instruct, the Qwen 2.5-Ma, is in fact a proprietary model.
Qwen2.5 Max is Alibaba’s most advanced AI model so far, designed to rival leading models like GPT-4, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and DeepSeek V3. As one of China’s most prominent tech giants, Alibaba has made a name for itself beyond e-commerce, making significant strides in cloud computing and artificial intelligence. The Qwen series, a key part of Alibaba LLM portfolio, includes a range of models from smaller open-weight versions to larger, proprietary systems.
While earlier models in the Alibaba Qwen model family were open-source, this latest version is not, meaning its underlying weights aren’t available to the public. However, it boasts an impressive training base, trained on 20 trillion tokens (equivalent to around 15 trillion words), contributing to its extensive knowledge and general AI proficiency. Qwen2.5-Max’s impressive capabilities are also a result of its comprehensive training.
Qwen2.5-Max is not designed as a reasoning model like DeepSeek R1 or OpenAI’s o1. It doesn’t provide transparent reasoning or a straightforward thought process behind its responses. Despite this limitation, Alibaba's ongoing AI developments suggest that future models, potentially in the Qwen 3 series, could focus on enhancing reasoning capabilities.
Qwen2.5-Max uses a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture, a strategy shared with models like DeepSeek V3. This approach can scale effectively and maintain computational efficiency, a significant factor in handling complex tasks.
In a traditional AI model, all parameters are active and engaged for every input, which can be resource-intensive. In contrast, MoE models like Qwen2.5-Max only activate the most relevant "experts" (specific parts of the model) depending on the task.
For example, if a user asks a question about parachutes, only the specialized components of the model related to parachutes will respond, while other parts of the model stay inactive. This makes Qwen2.5-Max a more resource-efficient alternative to dense models, where all parameters are active for every input.
To enhance the quality of its responses, it used two techniques:
a) Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT): Human annotators provided high-quality responses that helped guide the model toward producing more accurate and helpful outputs.
b) Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF): This method refined the model by aligning its answers with human preferences, ensuring that responses are more natural, contextually aware, and aligned with user expectations.
Qwen 2.5-Max is making a serious case for itself as a standout AI, especially regarding reasoning and understanding. In recent LiveBench AI tests, this latest version surpassed OpenAI’s GPT-4o and DeepSeek-V3 regarding math problems, logical deductions, and problem-solving. Qwen 2.5-Max outperformed GPT-4o by 5% and DeepSeek-V3 by 8% on Arena-Hard benchmarks.
Alibaba AI chatbot isn’t just for individual use—Alibaba Cloud has designed it with enterprise needs in mind. Qwen is particularly useful in customer support (AI chatbots that provide human-like responses), data analysis (processing large datasets quickly), and automation (enhancing workflows and cutting costs). Its business-oriented design positions it as a strong competitor to DeepSeek and ChatGPT .
Qwen AI is quickly becoming the go-to solution for the developers out there, and it’s very simple to know how to use Qwen 2.5 max. It excels in code generation and debugging, supporting various programming languages like Python, JavaScript, and C++. Qwen 2.5 AI has strong software development capabilities and can handle structured data formats such as tables and JSON files, simplifying the process of analyzing information.
While ChatGPT and DeepSeek are tuned mainly to English and Chinese, Qwen AI takes a more global approach. It offers robust multilingual capabilities and covers 29 languages, including Korean, Arabic, French, Spanish, Japanese, English, and Chinese. It is an excellent choice for international businesses operating in various languages. This gives China’s new AI model an edge for enterprises looking for high-quality AI performance across diverse markets.
As per the Qwen team, Qwen2.5-Max has demonstrated strong performance across various benchmarks, sparkling a Alibaba qwen 2.5 vs deepseek v3 debate. Compared to leading AI models like GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Llama 3.1 405B, and DeepSeek V3, Qwen2.5-Max holds its ground in several key areas, including conversation, coding, and general knowledge.
Regarding overall capabilities, Qwen2.5-Max scores higher than some competitors in a comprehensive benchmark that tests general AI proficiency. This suggests it has a versatile range of skills, making it highly adaptable for various applications. Qwen2.5-Max shows strength in preference-based tasks, outshining DeepSeek V3 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet in a benchmark that evaluates how well its responses align with human preferences.
The model also performs well in knowledge and reasoning tasks, ranking just behind Claude 3.5 Sonnet but surpassing other models like DeepSeek V3. In general knowledge question answering, Qwen2.5-Max edges out DeepSeek V3, though it still lags behind Claude 3.5 Sonnet in this domain. Its coding capabilities are competitive, performing similarly to DeepSeek V3 but slightly behind Claude 3.5 Sonnet.
Each model brings unique strengths, with Qwen 2.5-Max focusing on complex tasks, DeepSeek excelling in efficiency and affordability, and ChatGPT offering broad AI capabilities.
The Alibaba Qwen model price for various versions of Qwen 2.5 differs as follows:
a) Qwen-Max charges $0.0100 per 1,000 tokens for input and $0.0300 for output.
b) Qwen-Plus is priced at $0.0030 per 1,000 tokens for input and $0.0090 for output.
c) Qwen-Turbo offers the most affordable rates at $0.0004 per 1,000 tokens for input and $0.0012 for output.
The Alibaba Qwen pricing scheme and the Alibaba Qwen model price is part of Alibaba's strategy to attract a wider range of businesses, aiming to remain competitive with other major players like Tencent and Baidu in the AI space.
Qwen2.5-VL-72B-Instruct is now available to users through the Qwen 2.5 max Chat platform. Additionally, the entire Qwen2.5-VL model suite can be accessed on open-source platforms like Hugging Face and Alibaba's own community-driven Model Scope.
The easiest way to try out Qwen2.5-Max is using the Qwen Chat platform. This web-based interface allows you to interact with the model directly in your browser, similar to how you would use ChatGPT. First, open the platform, navigate to the model dropdown, and select Qwen 2.5 Max chat to start chatting with the model.
To begin, follow these instructions:
a) Launch your web browser and visit chat.qwenlm.ai.
b) Hit the "Sign in" button and log in with your email or Google account.
c) Once logged in, find the drop-down menu at the top of the page to choose from various Qwen 2.5 versions.
d) Select the version you'd like to use (such as Qwen 2.5 Plus, Max, or another option).
You're all set! Just type your prompt in the chatbox, and Qwen 2.5 AI will respond.
For developers, Qwen2.5-Max can also be accessed through the Alibaba Cloud Model Studio API. To start, you must create an Alibaba Cloud account, activate the Model Studio service, and generate an API key. Since the API follows a format similar to OpenAI's, integrating it into your system should be familiar.
Qwen 2.5 versatility allows users from various fields—writers, designers, content creators, and marketers—to maximize their output. Let's explore some exciting ways Qwen 2.5 AI can enhance your workflow and creativity.
Qwen 2.5 AI is perfect for generating text responses across various tasks. Whether engaging in research, creating content, brainstorming ideas, or simply conversing, it quickly provides relevant and insightful replies. Just type in your request or question in the chatbox, and the AI will generate a response, saving time and boosting productivity.
For those needing visuals, Alibaba Qwen model offers a seamless image generation feature. Describe the image you want to create and choose the ‘Image Generation’ option. Hit enter, and Qwen 2.5 will generate the image based on your description. This feature is handy for designers, marketers, and anyone needing high-quality visuals on the fly.
Qwen 2.5 AI also provides the ability to generate videos based on simple text prompts. Whether you need a promotional video, tutorial, or anything in between, type out your video description, select the ‘Video Generation’ option, and let the AI handle the rest. This feature benefits content creators, educators, and businesses looking to streamline video production without needing advanced tools or lengthy editing processes.
With the release of Alibaba Qwen 2.5 max, we are seeing a notable leap in the versatility of AI tools, from text generation to image creation and even video production. This highlights the increasing need for businesses to embrace AI technologies that can compete with industry giants and be adapted to their specific workflows.
Whether through more efficient customer support, advanced automation, or enhanced data processing, the opportunities for AI to drive business innovation are growing. As the capabilities of models like Qwen 2.5 AI continue to expand, the potential for custom AI solutions, particularly in areas like chatbot development and beyond, will only become more crucial for staying ahead in a fast-paced digital world.
From providing timely customer support to maintaining high levels of engagement, many companies struggle with scaling operations efficiently, especially when offering personalized interactions that customers expect. Managing high volumes of queries, delivering consistent service, and addressing customer concerns promptly can quickly overwhelm even the best customer service teams. This is where our future-forward AI/ML development firm, Webelight Solutions. Pvt. Ltd. can genuinely make a difference.
Our team specializes in creating custom chatbot solutions that align perfectly with your business goals. By integrating our custom AI chatbot solution tailored to your unique business needs, you can provide instant, round-the-clock support, answer frequently asked questions, and handle complex tasks like order processing, lead qualification, and more. It also frees your team to focus on higher-value activities while ensuring a seamless customer experience.
Qwen 2.5-Max stands out with its powerful combination of multilingual processing, advanced coding capabilities, and cost-effective performance. While other AI models like DeepSeek and ChatGPT may excel in specific areas, Qwen 2.5-Max provides a well-rounded, highly efficient solution for businesses and developers.