Technical head resigns from Alibaba’s Quen AI model team

Updated: 04-03-2026, 08.20 AM

What is the news?

Chinese tech company Alibaba’s Quen Artificial Intelligence (AI) project has suffered a major setback. Junyang Lin, the main technical leader of this project, has announced his departure from the team. He said in a post on social media platform X that he is now withdrawing from the Queen project. However, he did not give any information about the reason behind this. His sudden departure has sparked a lot of discussion in the company and the AI industry.

Lin was associated with the company for many years

Lin joined Alibaba Company in July 2019. After this, in April 2023, he was made a part of the Quen AI team. His role in this project was considered very important. Lin contributed to the development of several major AI models with the team. For this reason, his sudden departure from the team is creating an atmosphere of surprise and concern among his colleagues and technical experts.

Increasing recognition of Quen AI model

Alibaba’s Quen model has become one of China’s major open-source AI projects. The company has also recently introduced smaller models of Kwan 3.5. These include four models with parameters 0.8B, 2B, 4B and 9B. According to the company, these models have been designed for use on mobile and small devices. In recent tests, these AI models have given a tough competition to the systems of many international companies.

Colleagues said big loss

Following Lin’s departure, several Kwenn team members and industry experts have responded. Some people have called it a big loss for the project. Several colleagues said that Lin was instrumental in connecting the Quen project to the global developer community. It is not yet clear why he left the company. There has been no official statement from Alibaba on this matter yet.