Qwen is the most downloaded open model globally, although the margin is narrower than what Alibaba claims.

      Alibaba has announced that its Qwen models have reached over 3 billion downloads, making them the most widely used open-weight family globally. However, a report from Hugging Face, released the previous day, states that Qwen has 2,045 million downloads this year and lists 151,448 derivatives, contrasting with Alibaba's claim of over 300,000 derivatives.

      According to Alibaba, the Qwen models surpass offerings from Meta or Google, reinforcing the notion that Chinese labs are leading the open-weight competition. Nonetheless, the Hugging Face report indicates a slightly different picture. The report, titled "State of Open Models," mentions 2,045 million downloads this year, or 2,061 million when considering all repositories, while the 3 billion figure originated from an email statement by Alibaba.

      Despite the discrepancy, it does not alter the ranking of Qwen. It merely suggests that the headline figure is approximately one-third larger than what is actually recorded by the cited platform.

      The same discrepancy applies to the derivatives. Alibaba claims its ecosystem has generated over 300,000 derivative models, while Hugging Face lists 151,448 Qwen-based derivatives on its Hub, which is still 2.6 times the total number from Meta.

      This situation is not new. TNW previously highlighted that Alibaba referred to Qwen3.8 as the world's second-best model without providing evidence.

      Hugging Face is precise about its data. Downloads refer to activity on its own hub and do not account for API usage, private deployments, or models distributed elsewhere, while Alibaba operates its own distribution platform, ModelScope.

      However, this does not change the overall trend. The report notes, “Qwen has become part of the default workflow for developers deciding which models to fine-tune and deploy.”

      The strategy is centered around volume and reach. Alibaba has open-sourced over 460 models under flexible licenses and is promoting them through its cloud services in Southeast Asia and Africa, although it has also indicated a desire to charge the most intensive users of these open models.

      In response, American labs are taking action. In recent weeks, both Meta and Nvidia have released new open models, with Nvidia explicitly stating that it aims to compete with China in the open-weight sector.

      A potentially larger threat to Qwen's progress may come from domestic policy. Beijing is considering restrictions on foreign access to the nation's top models, which could diminish the reach that contributed to these download figures.