Alibaba Cloud launches affordable AI programming package, integrating four top open-source models

Alibaba is extending its AI push into the software development field, with its cloud computing division launching low-cost programming tool subscription packages that integrate multiple top domestic open-source large models, competing aggressively for developers.

On February 25, Alibaba Cloud Baolian launched a Coding Plan that includes API services for four open-source models: Qwen3.5, GLM-5, MiniMax M2.5, and Kimi K2.5. Currently, only Alibaba Cloud offers this service among global cloud providers.

Pricing-wise, the lightweight version costs 7.9 yuan for the first month and 40 yuan from the second month onward; the professional version costs 39.9 yuan for the first month and 200 yuan from the second month onward. Alibaba Cloud states that this package mainly targets developers. Users can freely switch between mainstream AI coding tools like Qwen Code, Claude Code, and Cline.

AI coding tools have recently attracted significant market attention. The launch of new features for Anthropic’s Claude model has triggered investor sell-offs across multiple industries.

IBM saw its stock drop by the largest single-day decline since 2000 on Monday, after Anthropic stated that Claude Code could replace Cobol running on its mainframes.

(IBM plunged over 13% on Monday)

Qwen3.5 Continues to Expand, Optimizing Performance and Deployment Barriers

Alibaba has been active at the model level this month.

Following the open-source release of Qwen3.5-397B-A17B on New Year’s Eve, Alibaba further open-sourced three medium-scale models on February 25: Qwen3.5-35B-A3B, Qwen3.5-122B-A10B, and Qwen3.5-27B.

According to Wall Street Insights, these three models have set new performance records for models of similar scale and can be directly deployed on consumer-grade graphics cards, making them more developer-friendly.

Additionally, the hosted model Qwen3.5-Flash based on Qwen3.5-35B-A3B is now available on Alibaba Cloud Baolian, with input costs as low as 0.2 yuan per million tokens.

Qwen3.5, as a native multimodal model, supports text, image, and video inputs, can analyze videos up to two hours long, and has been specially optimized for AI agent task scenarios.

AI Strategy Accelerates, AGI Becomes Core Goal

Alibaba’s move in the programming tools sector reflects the broader acceleration of its overall AI strategy.

Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang explicitly stated a year ago that the company’s primary goal has shifted to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)—a highly intelligent system capable of mimicking and even rivaling human thinking. This strategic shift is quite different from Alibaba’s traditional e-commerce business.

The Qwen series models, with their high performance and open-source approach, have gained widespread recognition in the industry.

Analysts believe that the open-source route allows users to access model capabilities at lower costs, and including multiple startup models in a single subscription package further strengthens Alibaba Cloud’s position as China’s AI infrastructure platform.

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