Alibaba Qwen tech lead Junyang Lin quits in surprise resignation

The retreat of the technology leader of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Qwen open-source model is a surprise move that has shaken the global developer community and cast a shadow over the tech giant’s push into artificial intelligence.

Junyang Lin, who also goes by the name Justin, announced the unexpected development in a post early Wednesday that quickly gained support from the open source community. “I resign. Farewell my dear qwen,” he wrote to X, without going into too much detail.

Lin did not respond to messages seeking comment. An Alibaba spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lin is one of the most influential figures in Alibaba’s transition to artificial intelligence as the Chinese e-commerce giant searches for its next growth engine beyond online shopping and cloud computing. The Qwen series of large language models are among the best-performing offerings globally and serve as the technical basis for a number of consumer applications, including Alibaba’s revamped chatbot.

It also founded a team within Qwen last year that works on robotics and embodied artificial intelligence.

Before his announcement, Lin had been working on building public models at Alibaba since 2022. According to his LinkedIn profile, he served as the technology lead for Qwen’s broad range of language and multimodal models and oversaw open source initiatives. He holds a master’s degree from Peking University.

At a forum in Beijing in January, his last public appearance as Qwen’s chairman, Lin said Chinese companies were unlikely to make fundamental breakthroughs in artificial intelligence in the next three to five years, ahead of companies like OpenAI and Anthropic PBC.

“While the majority of OpenAI’s computation is devoted to next-generation research, we are very lean; just meeting delivery demands consumes most of our resources,” Lin said at the time.