Alibaba and DeepSeek Unleash Cheaper AI Giants

Chinese AI companies Alibaba and DeepSeek have made significant strides in the field of artificial intelligence, with Alibaba releasing its Qwen3.8-Max model, which carries a whopping 2.4 trillion total parameters, making it one of the most capable systems in its family to date.

The Hangzhou-based company's shares rose 7% following the release, while American depositary receipts increased by about 4% before the open. Qwen3.8-Max is designed to handle text, images, and video, and can process up to 1 million tokens at a time, outperforming its predecessors.

Meanwhile, DeepSeek's V4-Flash model has undercut Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 by more than 100 times on cost, with an estimated average price of just 3 cents per test. This move has sparked a price war in the AI market, with rivals such as Moonshot and MiniMax trimming their prices in response.