Alibaba previews Qwen 3.8 — a 2.4-trillion-parameter flagship with open weights promised

Alibaba's Qwen team unveiled Qwen 3.8 on July 19: 2.4 trillion parameters, multimodal, and the second-largest publicly known model behind Moonshot's 2.8T Kimi K3. Alibaba claims it sits second only to Claude Fable 5 but has published no independent benchmarks yet; it is available in preview through Token Plan, Qoder, and QoderWork at 10% of standard pricing, with an open-weight release promised.

What it means Two Chinese labs have now promised open weights on trillion-scale flagships within a week — the self-hostable ceiling keeps rising, and the vendor benchmark claims remain unverified.