[DigitalToday reporter Chi-gyu Hwang] Alibaba Group on Aug. 3 released its new flagship model Qwen 3.8-Max as an API and set its price below rival Moonshot AI’s popular Kimi K3 model, The Information reported.
The open-source version of Qwen 3.8-Max will be available to download next week.
The API price for Qwen 3.8-Max, Alibaba’s largest model to date with 2.4 trillion parameters, is $2 per 1 million input tokens and $6 per 1 million output tokens, the report said. Moonshot’s Kimi K3, which has 2.8 trillion parameters and is open-source, charges $3 per 1 million input tokens and $15 per 1 million output tokens.
Alibaba’s move shows competition is intensifying among Chinese AI developers seeking to challenge Anthropic and OpenAI with larger open-source models.