Alibaba has claimed that its new artificial intelligence (AI) model performs better than DeepSeek.

The Chinese technology company released a new version of its Qwen 2.5 AI model on Wednesday, called Qwen 2.5 Max.

In an announcement posted on its official WeChat account, the tech giant stated that Qwen 2.4-Max outperforms Open AI's GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3, and Meta's Llama-3.1-405B almost across the board.

Alibaba stated that Qwen 2.5 Max achieves competitive performance in several benchmarks, outperforming many high-end models, and is designed to have a lower cost per use, making it more affordable for a wide range of applications.

The company said that the model also excels in understanding and responding to complex instructions, making it highly effective for a variety of tasks..

The launch of Qwen 2.5 Max, announced on Chinese New Year, comes after DeepDeek emerged as the most downloaded free app on the Apple App Store in the US.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that Microsoft and OpenAI would investigate whether a group linked to Chinese AI startup DeepSeek improperly obtained data from OpenAI’s technology.

According to Bloomberg, the probe follows concerns that the data extraction could breach terms of service or indicate unauthorised access by individuals associated with DeepSeek.

The move came after DeepSeek had to temporarily restrict new user registrations following a "large-scale malicious attack" on Monday.

DeepSeek’s release of its R1 model in early January caused significant market turmoil, surpassing expectations and outperforming US competitors despite using far fewer resources than OpenAI or Google. This rapid rise raised questions about the underpinnings of the US stock market boom, which relies on AI hyperscalers investing heavily in computing power.

Tech stocks, including Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, and Alphabet, experienced a substantial drop in value as investors reconsidered their reliance on costly AI hardware. The decline wiped out nearly $1 trillion in market value before stabilising somewhat.

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