TLDRs;
- Alibaba’s Qwen3-Omni model tops Hugging Face, surpassing OpenAI and Google in the multimodal AI race.
- Alibaba’s open-source AI models now hold half of the top 10 Hugging Face spots, reflecting rising global adoption.
- Company shares surged nearly 50% in September, driven by strong AI growth and cloud business momentum.
- Analysts raised price targets for Alibaba as investors bet big on China’s AI and cloud leadership.
Alibaba’s Qwen3-Omni multimodal system has taken the number one spot on Hugging Face’s trending model list, leapfrogging rival offerings from OpenAI and Google.
The milestone highlights the accelerating momentum of Chinese open-source AI projects, which are steadily challenging Western incumbents in both capability and adoption.
A Model Leading Across Modalities
At the top of the Hugging Face chart sits Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B, a variant of the Qwen3-Omni family. Close behind is another of Alibaba’s releases, Qwen-Image-Edit-2509, further reinforcing the company’s dominance on the platform.
Together, Alibaba’s models now account for half of the top 10 trending AI systems, sharing space with contributions from Tencent, DeepSeek, and OpenBMB. In contrast, only IBM represents Western firms in the current rankings.
The Qwen3-Omni series was introduced in April and has since expanded into a suite of models capable of handling text, audio, images, and video in one unified framework. Alibaba’s cloud computing division describes the system as the first “native end-to-end multimodal AI,” designed to seamlessly integrate multiple forms of input and output for real-world applications.
According to internal data, the Qwen3-Omni series outperforms both earlier Qwen iterations and competitor models in multimodal benchmarks. While these claims await independent validation, the system’s rapid adoption by the global developer community signals confidence in its effectiveness.
Investor Optimism on AI Growth
Alibaba’s momentum in artificial intelligence is not just technical, it’s also financial. The company’s shares rose 4.14% in Hong Kong on September 29, closing at HK$173.40. This rally capped a month in which Alibaba’s stock surged nearly 50%, making it the top performer on the Hang Seng Tech Index.
Investor enthusiasm has been fueled by strong growth in AI-related products and better-than-expected cloud revenues. Analysts at Morningstar boosted their fair value estimate for Alibaba’s shares by nearly 50%, while Morgan Stanley raised its target for Alibaba’s U.S.-listed stock to US$200. Both cited the company’s aggressive push into cloud and AI development as key drivers of long-term growth.
Adding to this wave of optimism, Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment Management reopened its position in Alibaba’s U.S. shares after a four-year absence, underscoring renewed global interest in the company’s prospects.
China’s Open-Source AI Revolution
The rise of Qwen3-Omni is emblematic of a broader trend where China’s open-source AI ecosystem is gaining global traction. In September, the ATOM Project reported that Alibaba’s Qwen series overtook Meta’s Llama as the most widely used open AI model worldwide. This shift indicates that open, developer-friendly systems from China are increasingly shaping the global AI innovation race.
Qwen researcher Lin Junyang attributes the system’s success to improvements in foundational projects across image and audio recognition.
“We combined everything to build our Qwen3-Omni,” Lin explained, pointing to its integrated architecture as a major differentiator.
While Western firms like OpenAI and Google continue to lead in closed commercial deployments, Alibaba’s strategy of releasing powerful open-source models appears to be paying off by rapidly scaling adoption across research and enterprise use cases.
Looking Ahead
That said, Alibaba’s Qwen3-Omni is more than just a model, it represents a shift in the balance of power within artificial intelligence. By outperforming rivals on Hugging Face and gaining traction with global developers, the company has cemented itself as a leading force in the multimodal AI space.
As competition heats up between open and closed ecosystems, the success of Qwen3-Omni may signal the dawn of a new era where open-source innovation leads the charge in shaping the future of AI.
