Business

Qwen Is No Longer Free: Alibaba Wants Companies to Share Revenue.

Alibaba plans to ask major corporate users of its open-weights Qwen 3.8-Max model to share a portion of their revenue, Reuters reports. A turning point for the free open-source era.

· Huuush

Qwen Is No Longer Free: Alibaba Wants Companies to Share Revenue

Key takeaways

  1. 1According to Reuters, Alibaba plans to ask companies that use its next open-weights model, Qwen 3.8-Max, at scale to share part of the revenue it generates, and the share is still under negotiation.
  2. 2Qwen 3.8-Max is Alibaba's largest model, with 2.4 trillion total parameters (95 billion active), and was released as open weights this week.
  3. 3As with Moonshot's Kimi K3, which introduced revenue sharing of up to 30% for services with more than $20 million in annual revenue, a shift to commercial revenue sharing by Qwen, with 700 million cumulative downloads, could change the rules of the open-source ecosystem.

"Free" is no longer the default for open-source AI. Reuters reports that Alibaba plans to ask major corporate users of its next open-weights model, Qwen 3.8-Max, to share a portion of the revenue it generates.

Alibaba Qwen 3.8-Max revenue sharing: the end of free open source
Qwen 3.8-Max: an open-weights model gets revenue-sharing terms (source: X post)

What Qwen Is Asking Companies For: Revenue Sharing Behind "Free"

Citing two people familiar with the matter, Reuters reported that Alibaba will ask companies that use Qwen 3.8-Max at scale to share revenue starting next week. The model has 2.4 trillion total parameters (95 billion active) and is Alibaba's largest, released as open weights this week. The revenue-share percentage is still under negotiation and has not been set.

Qwen 3.8-Max: 2.4 trillion parameters
Qwen 3.8-Max: an open-weights model with 2.4 trillion total parameters and 95 billion active (source: X post)

When a Free Model Leans Toward Paid: Where Does the Cost Come From?

Until now, Alibaba has charged only developers who use the model on its own cloud, while leaving self-hosted deployment in customers' data centers free. If this move becomes reality, the area it bills for widens to include large commercial deployments that never go through Alibaba Cloud.

There is already a precedent. Chinese AI startup Moonshot's Kimi K3 introduced a contract that asks service providers with annual revenue above $20 million to share up to 30%. Chinese companies are moving to monetize through a freemium model.

The Kimi K3 revenue-sharing precedent: open source turns to monetization
The precedent: Moonshot's Kimi K3 attached terms for sharing up to 30% of revenue above $20 million a year (source: X post)

A Bigger Change Because It's Qwen: The Open-Source Ecosystem's Next Calculation

With 700 million cumulative downloads on Hugging Face, the Qwen family is the most popular open-source AI system in the world. Experts read it this way: the moment the most widely used open model turns to "free deployment plus commercial revenue sharing," the rules of the open-source AI ecosystem itself could change.

700 million Hugging Face downloads: the world's most downloaded open-source AI
Qwen has 700 million cumulative downloads on Hugging Face, making it the most widely used open-source AI in the world (source: X post)

If the Free Era Ends: What Should Enterprise Users Prepare?

From DeepSeek's and Kimi's low-cost push to Alibaba's shift to monetization, China's open-weights camp is moving to a strategy of "grow share for free, then charge in the commercial tier." For companies, that means we are entering an era where downloading a model can itself become a contract term. That is why you should check ahead of time whether there are conditions like "use it free now, share revenue later."

Related: X post · MTS report

Frequently asked questions

Is Qwen going to be paid now?
Reports say Alibaba plans to ask for revenue sharing on large-scale commercial deployments outside its own cloud, widening what it bills for to include big deployments that did not go through Alibaba Cloud. No specific percentage has been set.
How big is Qwen 3.8-Max?
It is Alibaba's largest model, with 2.4 trillion total parameters and 95 billion active, released as open weights this week.
Do other Chinese models ask for revenue sharing?
Moonshot's Kimi K3 has already introduced a contract that asks service providers with more than $20 million in annual revenue to share up to 30%.
What should enterprise users check?
A model download can itself become a contract term, so check ahead of time whether there are conditions like "use it free now, share revenue later."

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