Alibaba Previews Qwen 3.8: 2.4 Trillion Parameters, Claims 'Second Only to Fable 5'

What happened

Alibaba unveiled Qwen 3.8-Max-Preview at WAIC 2026 in Shanghai (July 19). It is a multimodal model with 2.4 trillion parameters — the first Qwen model above 1 trillion parameters, capable of processing text, images, video, and documents in a single model.

Context and impact

The announcement came three days after Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 launch (2.8T parameters). Alibaba claims Qwen 3.8 is 'second only to Fable 5' on internal benchmarks — without independent verification. Open weights are promised 'soon'. The preview is available via Alibaba Token Plan at 10% of standard pricing.

Details

• Parameters: 2.4 trillion — larger than DeepSeek V4, smaller than Kimi K3 (2.8T)
• Modalities: text, images, video, documents in a single model
• Preview pricing: 10% of standard price via Alibaba Token Plan
• Open weights: promised, no date announced
• Benchmarks: internal only; no MMLU, ARC, or other standard scores published