Alibaba (BABA) has started rolling out a new app version of its artificial intelligence-powered chatbot Qwen, to better compete with rivals such as OpenAI’s (OPENAI) ChatGPT, Google’s (GOOG)(GOOGL) Gemini and xAI’s (X.AI) Grok.
The updated app is currently available in China. It will be rolled out later in international markets for Apple’s (AAPL) iOS and Google’s Android. The older app version was called Tongyi, but the new app is called Qwen. Alibaba plans to add agentic-AI features to support shopping on platforms, including the main Taobao marketplace.
Alibaba also recently cut the cost of tokens for its Qwen3-Max model, which is its most powerful. It reduced its lowest API rates from $0.86 to $0.46 per million input tokens and from $3.44 to $1.84 per million output tokens, according to the South China Morning Post.
Last week, the Financial Times reported on a White House memo claiming Alibaba was helping the Chinese military conduct “operations” against targets in the U.S. Alibaba denied the allegations.
U.S. Representative John Moolenar (R-Mich.), who serves as Chairman of the House Select Committee on China, has called for Alibaba to be delisted from U.S. stock exchanges.
“The Select Committee has said for years that a Chinese company anywhere in the world is subject to Chinese law, and this is what we mean,” Moolenar said in a statement today. “Alibaba has no choice but to give up sensitive data on its customers and provide cybersecurity vulnerabilities to the CCP or it will face serious consequences, just like Jack Ma did. The federal government and industry must take steps to protect the American people and eliminate Chinese companies’ access to our markets and innovation.”