Alibaba Group has unveiled a new artificial intelligence model that signals China’s growing ambition in advanced AI, claiming parity with the most sophisticated US models while outperforming them in practical applications.
According to SCMP, the model, Qwen3-Max-Thinking, achieved perfect scores in two of the world’s most challenging mathematics competitions—the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) 2025 and the Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament (HMMT). Alibaba says this marks the first time a Chinese AI has reached 100 percent accuracy in these reasoning-focused contests, putting it on par with OpenAI’s GPT-5 Pro, which had previously achieved similar results.
These competitions test high-level problem-solving across arithmetic, algebra, number theory, probability, and combinatorics. Experts say performance in such contests reflects an AI model’s ability to reason and generalize, going beyond pattern recognition into analytical thought.
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Qwen3-Max-Thinking builds on Alibaba’s Qwen3-Max, a trillion-parameter model launched in September, which itself was an upgrade from the original Qwen3 released in April. According to Alibaba Cloud, Qwen3-Max and its new reasoning variant match or exceed domestic and global competitors, including OpenAI’s GPT-5 Pro, Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4, DeepSeek’s V3.1 Chat, and xAI’s Grok 4.
Alibaba has also demonstrated the model’s real-world capabilities. In a “real money, real market” cryptocurrency experiment, Qwen3-Max earned a 22.3 percent return on a $10,000 investment over two weeks. By contrast, DeepSeek’s V3.1 Chat returned 4.9 percent, and all US models recorded losses, with OpenAI’s GPT-5 losing 62.7 percent. Analysts say the simulation underscores the model’s ability to integrate reasoning with dynamic decision-making, a critical advantage in AI applications from finance to logistics.
The Qwen3-Max-Thinking model is now available to individual users through Alibaba Cloud’s web-based Qwen chatbot and its application programming interface (API). Lin noted that the model’s deployment will continue to evolve, emphasizing that refinement is ongoing.
“It’s a bit hard to take care of everything,” Lin Junyang, a Qwen team researcher, said. “We need some more time. The job’s not finished.”
The launch comes amid a broader geopolitical context in which Chinese AI firms face restrictions on selling high-performance computing chips abroad, particularly to the US market. Nvidia’s Blackwell AI chips, for example, cannot currently be sold in China due to US export controls, highlighting a persistent technology and trade standoff. Despite such restrictions, Alibaba’s homegrown Qwen models demonstrate the country’s ability to develop competitive AI domestically, mitigating dependence on foreign hardware and software.
Experts say Alibaba’s achievement illustrates a dual trend: China is accelerating development of reasoning-focused AI models to compete globally, and companies are increasingly testing AI in real-world applications rather than only benchmarks. Alibaba’s success in cryptocurrency trading simulations suggests that these models are being designed for decision-making under uncertainty, not just academic problem-solving.
As the competition heats up, there is a growing belief that China’s AI push could reshape the global landscape. The Qwen3-Max-Thinking model is believed to be a testament that China is not only keeping pace with the US in AI reasoning but is beginning to deploy it in practical, high-stakes scenarios. If such models continue to improve, the country is expected to significantly reduce reliance on imported AI systems while fostering its own ecosystem of advanced AI solutions.
The model’s availability to developers and individual users also points to Alibaba’s strategy to broaden the adoption and integration of AI across industries, from cloud computing to finance and enterprise decision-making. With applications ranging from mathematics to trading, Qwen3-Max-Thinking represents a significant step in China’s ambition to establish global leadership in artificial intelligence, even as restrictions on advanced hardware continue to pose challenges.
This launch also pinpoints AI as a key component of national competitiveness now, with implications not just for technology but also for finance, education, and strategic industries worldwide.