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.

Max's release points to the pressure DeepSeek's meteoric rise in the past three weeks has placed on overseas rivals and domestic competition.

Chinese startup DeepSeek's artificial intelligence challenges major U.S. tech companies like Meta and OpenAI. Here's why.