Alibaba responds after the head of the Qianwen large model departs

Observer.com has learned that on the morning of March 5, Alibaba responded internally to the matter of Lin Junyang’s resignation in an internal email.

Alibaba said it will continue to adhere to its open-source model strategy and will steadily increase investment in AI R&D and efforts to attract outstanding talent.

An Alibaba insider told Observer.com that the company has not changed Qianwen’s open-source strategy, nor has it used commercialized goal assessments like daily active users to evaluate the model team. Rumors about Lin Junyang’s resignation are unrelated.

The actual situation is that as Qianwen upgraded from a foundation model to the group’s overall strategy, the company believes it needs to recruit more top-tier technical experts to improve the talent density within the foundation model team. In this process, adjustments were made to Lin Junyang’s scope of responsibilities. Lin Junyang did not accept them, and therefore submitted his resignation.

It is reported that in the early hours of March 4, Lin Junyang, the technical负责人 of the Alibaba Qwen team, announced his resignation on a social platform. Yu Bowen, the head of post-training for Qwen, also officially left his position.

The day before Lin Junyang announced his resignation, the Qianwen Qwen 3.5 series of small models had just been released. These models can be used in various scenarios, from deploying AI on the device side to lightweight agents, among others.

The release drew attention from industry insiders, including Elon Musk, who commented that these models demonstrate “impressive intelligence density.”

On the afternoon of March 4, Alibaba Group urgently held an All Hands meeting. Management acknowledged that “there were shortcomings in communication” and emphasized that “Qianwen’s foundation model is the most important matter for the group at present.”

The full text of the email is as follows:

To all Tongyi Lab colleagues:

The company has decided to approve student Lin Junyang’s resignation. Thank you for Lin Junyang’s contribution in his role in the past. Jingren will continue to lead Tongyi Lab in推进 the subsequent work. Meanwhile, the company will set up a foundation model support group, coordinated together by me, Jingren, and Fan Yu to support the foundation model buildout with group resources.

If technological development does not move forward, it will fall behind. Developing large foundation models is our key strategy for the future. While continuing to adhere to the open-source model strategy, we will steadily increase R&D investment in the field of artificial intelligence and increase efforts to attract outstanding talent. Let’s加油 together.