Following in the footsteps of DeepSeek, Chinese tech giant Alibaba has strategically launched its Qwen 2.5-Max AI model on the first day of the Chinese Lunar New Year, underscoring the urgency it feels in the face of fierce local competition.
The mirage framing in the title aged well. A lot of what got brushed off as China-sceptic posturing turned out to be the more accurate read. The subsidised pricing, the benchmark claims, the free model that isn't quite free. Wrote something on where the cost actually lands for developers using Chinese AI APIs: https://sulat.com/p/the-real-cost-of-cheap-ai-inference
The mirage framing in the title aged well. A lot of what got brushed off as China-sceptic posturing turned out to be the more accurate read. The subsidised pricing, the benchmark claims, the free model that isn't quite free. Wrote something on where the cost actually lands for developers using Chinese AI APIs: https://sulat.com/p/the-real-cost-of-cheap-ai-inference