Alibaba Adds Commercial Restrictions to Open-Weight Qwen3.8-Max AI Model
Alibaba Group Holding has released the core files for its latest AI model, Qwen3.8-Max, allowing anyone to download and use it for free. However, there are some new rules for commercial use: companies making over $50 million in a year that provide 'model as a service' or 'AI work assistant' must obtain a separate license for any revenue-generating uses of the model. Internal use is fine, as long as the model or its outputs aren't shared outside the organization. Most developers can freely use and modify the model but will need to pay for computing costs. The model has 2.4 trillion parameters, and API access is priced at 12 yuan ($1.80) per million input tokens in China.
Key facts
- Alibaba released Qwen3.8-Max as open-weight, free to download.
- Commercial restrictions apply to companies with revenue over US$50 million in any 12-month period.
- Affected companies must obtain a separate commercial licence from Qwen.
- Internal use is exempt from the licence requirement.
- The model has 2.4 trillion parameters.
- API pricing: 12 yuan per million input tokens and 36 yuan per million output tokens in China.
- International API pricing: US$2 per million input tokens and US$6 per million output tokens.
- Qwen3.8-Max's rates are about 40% (input) and 24% (output) of Claude Opus 5 from Anthropic.
Entities
Institutions
- Alibaba Group Holding
- Qwen
- Anthropic
Locations
- China