Discussion

• @justinlin610 Junyang Lin on x

  me stepping down. bye my beloved qwen.

• @kxli_2000 Kaixin Li on x

  @Alibaba_Qwen Qwen could have had a Singapore base, all thanks to Junyang. But now that he's gone, there's no reason left to stay here.

• @huybery Binyuan Hui on x

  bye qwen, me too.

• @cherry_cc12 Chen Cheng on x

  I'm truly heartbroken. I know leaving wasn't your choice. Just last night, we were side by side launching the Qwen3.5 small model. I honestly can't imagine Qwen without you.

• @kxli_2000 Kaixin Li on x

  Signing off from @Alibaba_Qwen. Grateful for the chance to work with such brilliant minds. Proud of our impact. Onwards and upwards!

• @wzhao_nlp Wenting Zhao on x

  I truly think Junyang leaving Qwen means the end of an era. It was such an amazing period of time. Qwen models powered the advancement for science, engineering, open-source eco-system, and so much more. Let's all thank Junyang 🙏

• @yuchenj_uw Yuchen Jin on x

  End of an era. Qwen lost its tech lead. When we launched the Qwen 3 Next endpoints on Hyperbolic with Junyang and his team, they were still online at 6am Beijing time! Thank you for pushing open source AI forward. Wishing you the best, @JustinLin610!

• @xianbao_qian @xianbao_qian on x

  There is no one, literally no one, like @JustinLin610 in this world. You are truly one of a kind. I knew it from the very first moment we met. Your departure is an immense loss to @Alibaba_Qwen 😭 But I know you are destined for something far greater. If there is anything I

• @natolambert Nathan Lambert on x

  The gaping hole that Qwen imploding would leave in the open research ecosystem will be hard to fill. The small models are irreplaceable. I'll do my best to keep carrying that torch (not that I've reached the level of impact of Qwen by any means). Every bit matters.

• @youjiacheng You Jiacheng on x

  To be precise: Alibaba-Cloud kicked out Qwen's tech lead.

• @himanshustwts Himanshu on x

  Junyang is as equivalent to Sam, Dario or any other AI leader of the decade. Incredible run with open source efforts and this is for sure this is gonna be huge loss for Qwen as more resignations are following in a matter of time.

• @chujiezheng Chujie Zheng on x

  Qwen is nothing without its people

• @beffjezos @beffjezos on x

  Imagine if xAI started a Singapore lab and just soaked up all the Qwen bros Would be an insane move

• @frontier_foid @frontier_foid on x

  chinese ai labs finally catching up with the top us labs in the only metric that really matters - drama.

• @bryancsk @bryancsk on x

  If GIC had any vision, instead of handing however many billions to Anthropic it could have poached the Qwen team set up a lab right in Singapore. Some team members are already here.

• @crystalsssup Crystal on x

  I'm truly surprised. Qwen has really lost a great talent. But that's the politics of big tech hierarchies. Junyang was a P10 at Alibaba, and with the highest level being P14, there were many layers between him and top leadership. Perhaps many things weren't his call to make,

• @tydsh Yuandong Tian on x

  Sad to hear this news! Hats off to Qwen team! Great job!!

• @altryne Alex Volkov on x

  Looks like @Ali_TongyiLab @Alibaba_Qwen is going through a change of leadership! Both Binyuan and Junyang who were very active on here, interacting with the community, releasing great models have departed [image]

• @kevinsxu Kevin S. Xu on x

  Based on the latest rumor mill, looks like two things happened: 1. CEO of Alibaba Cloud (who is btw the CEO of all of Alibaba) is exerting a more direct line of sight on Qwen 2. A new person, possibly someone who was ex Gemini team, is brought in and layered on top of current

• @phequals7 @phequals7 on x

  META is going to offer ungodly amounts to this man Llama redemption arc might be a thing

• @jeremyphoward Jeremy Howard on x

  WTF is going on at Qwen?!? Some kind of implosion? This is really sad and worrying. They've been *such* a strong team, and are losing some of their very best researchers.

• @teortaxestex @teortaxestex on x

  Junyang had been announcing Qwen models for... not so long, 2 years? Yet it was more models - many of them absurdly strong - than a dozen other labs together have released in their lifetime. I am a DeepSeek fan, but I have to admit: Qwen is what largely kept open source alive.

• @scaling01 @scaling01 on x

  guys can we please slow down. we are at the beginning of march and: - xAI imploded - Qwen is imploding - Anthropic is a supply chain risk - OpenAI is now seen on the same level as the NSA - Google now 2nd tier behind OpenAI and Anthropic I can't do 10 more months of this

• @xinyu2ml Xinyu Yang on x

  Qwen delivered the best open-source models across sizes and modalities, for both academia and industry. And the response? Replace the excellent leader with a non-core people from Google Gemini, driven by DAU metrics. If you judge foundation model teams like consumer apps, don't

• @vince_chow1 Vincent Chow on x

  In huge news for global open-source AI, Qwen's tech lead has unexpectedly stepped down, seemingly not fully of his own volition. Lin, born in 1993, was one of the driving forces behind Qwen's early decision to go open-source with its models, even before DeepSeek forced everyone

• @hxiao Han Xiao on x

  Okay Junyang is not Qwen, and Qwen is not Junyang. Behind every great model is a team grinding through data pipelines, training runs, and sleepless launches. But he was the voice, the bridge, the person who made the global AI dev community feel like Qwen was theirs too. That kind

• @anthonyronning Anthony Ronning on x

  It sucks to see the heart and soul of what made qwen be destroyed by business executives. Really hope deepseek or kimi teams pick them up.

• @yzhang_cs Yu Zhang on x

  Behind every successful LLM is a highly organized, intellectually dense lab led by someone who keeps things open and equal. I've always valued this kind of environment, espc in the open-source community, and I feel so sad to see this happening now.

• @afinetheorem Kevin A. Bryan on x

  One reason to visit China often is that, like SF vs everywhere else, I feel six months behind in my knowledge base always. Eg, this week Alibaba's best AI folks quit, and BYD went from “crush everyone” to worst YoY sales drop I have ever heard of (I have no idea why for either).

• @kimmonismus @kimmonismus on x

  Qwens legendary tech-lead leaves the company. Huge loss for alibaba

• @xwang_lk Xin Eric Wang on x

  Bro, don't join a frontier lab just to build proprietary models. Start your own company and build the next Qwen. Be the one and only.

• @teortaxestex @teortaxestex on x

  huh Well. Good job, babus *Alibaba* Qwen is pretty much over Ironic, it wasn't even a startup. Burned purely by lack of ethics [image]

• @bonegpt Bone on x

  the time to debate autonomous weapons is over the AI draft has begun

• @jbrukh Jake Brukhman on x

  Come train huge open models on decentralized networks with us.

• @ns123abc Nik on x

  🚨 ALIBABA FIRES ARCHITECT OF ENTIRE QWEN MODEL FAMILY >Junyang Lin: “bye my beloved qwen.” >core r&d team also out it's qwover

• @cedric_chee Cedric on x

  Qwen is imploding. Sad

• @yulun_du Yulun Du on x

  All the best. Alibaba is certainly making a huge mistake.

• @beffjezos @beffjezos on x

  America needs to operation paperclip the Qwen team. This is the way to revuild American Open Source

• @francis_yao_ Yao Fu on x

  Junyang is one of the most exceptional leader I've ever witnessed throughout the entire AI/LLM history. A legendary researcher with significant contribution to the entire world and humanity. Under his lead, Qwen becomes one of the best open model that accelerates the progress of

• @dejavucoder Sankalp on x

  woah bunch of qwen members left [image]

• @elaina43114880 Elaina on x

  Oh no, Junyang Lin leaving the Qwen team he loves was not voluntary, according to his heartbroken colleague.🥹😭

• @jiayq Yangqing Jia on x

  My 2 cents on the @Alibaba_Qwen and @JustinLin610 news. 1. Kudos to Qwen's open-source efforts and Junyang's absolute contribution. Open source channels the best intentions and best technology into the global community. Qwen has been a genuine contributor to this ethos. 2. For

• @poezhao0605 Poe Zhao on x

  Update on the Qwen shakeup. Per 36Kr, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu held an emergency all-hands with the Qwen team this afternoon. He told the team: “I should have known about this sooner.” Alibaba's official framing: this is expansion, not contraction. But the meeting revealed real [imag…