A key technical leader of Alibaba’s Qwen AI project has resigned shortly after the company launched its Qwen 3.5 open-weight small models.
Junyang Lin, a significant figure on the Qwen team, announced his departure on X, without providing further details. Lin joined Alibaba in July 2019 and joined the Qwen team in April 2023, as per his LinkedIn profile.
His sudden exit has stirred reactions from colleagues and partners, occurring as AI competition heats up globally, with companies striving to rival models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.
The Qwen models have become a major part of China’s open-weight AI landscape, challenging leading U.S. systems in benchmarks. Introduced in April 2023, the model was made publicly accessible in September after regulatory approval.
Alibaba launched the Qwen 3.5 Small Model series on Monday, featuring models with parameters ranging from 0.8B to 9B. These multimodal models are tailored for various applications, from on-device AI to lightweight agents. The launch gained attention from the AI community, including Elon Musk, who noted the models’ “impressive intelligence density.”
Lin’s exit coincided with new model releases, eliciting notable reactions from those who viewed his role as pivotal.
Wenting Zhao, a Qwen research scientist, referred to Lin’s departure as “the end of an era,” expressing gratitude on X for his contributions to open-source AI progress. Yuchen Jin, CTO of AI startup Hyperbolic, recognized Lin’s role in building global developer ties, recalling collaborative model launches. Tiezhen Wang from Hugging Face also termed Lin’s departure as “an immense loss” for Qwen.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
Details about Lin’s departure remain unknown. He did not comment further.
Chen Cheng, a Qwen contributor, expressed being “heartbroken” by Lin’s exit. On X, Cheng appeared to address Lin directly, saying, “I know leaving wasn’t your choice” and noted teamwork on model launches hours prior.
Binyuan Hui, another team member, has <a href="https://x.com/huybery" target="_blank