Alibaba's new AI model says it can hang with Claude
Alibaba just released Qwen3.8-Max, calling it its biggest and most capable model yet, and claiming it goes blow for blow with Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's best systems, plus domestic rival Moonshot AI's Kimi. On the crowdsourced Arena leaderboard, Qwen3.8-Max reportedly trails only Claude among text models. The release lands as US-China AI tensions simmer in Washington and Silicon Valley, with open Chinese models increasingly matching closed American ones on performance, raising fresh questions about who actually holds the technological edge.
Nothing says 'we're just behind' quite like publishing your own benchmarks proving it.