There’s been an escalation in the generative AI large language model “wars” as Alibaba Qwen 2.5 launched Wednesday. This latest AI salvo from China-based Alibaba is directly aimed at its in-country rival DeepSeek, which launched its own AI--DeepSeek-V3--in December 2024 and its R1 version in mid-January.

In an unexpected move on the first day of Lunar New Year, Chinese tech giant Alibaba announced its latest AI model, Qwen 2.5-Max, claiming it outperforms several leading models including the recently released DeepSeek-V3.

Alibaba says the latest version of its Qwen 2.5 artificial intelligence model can take on fellow Chinese firm DeepSeek's V3 as well as the top models from U.S. rivals OpenAI and Meta.