Alibaba Moves Qwen Toward Revenue Sharing for Large Commercial Users
Alibaba plans to require some large commercial users of its next open-weight Qwen model to share revenue, testing a freemium licensing model for open-weight AI.
Why it matters: Open-weight AI may be evolving from free distribution toward enterprise licensing for high-revenue users.
Alibaba is preparing a new commercial model for its open-weight artificial-intelligence ecosystem that could require large businesses to share some of the revenue they generate using its models.
The change is expected to accompany Qwen3.8-Max, Alibaba’s next major open-weight model, according to Reuters. Companies would still be able to access the model architecture and weights, but large commercial users could be required to negotiate separate agreements with Alibaba.
Until now, Alibaba has generally monetized Qwen through cloud hosting while allowing companies to deploy many of its open models on their own infrastructure without paying model-licensing fees.
If the approach spreads, the AI market may move toward a hybrid model: open weights for distribution and developer adoption, with enterprise licensing, cloud services and optimization becoming the monetization layer.