Alibaba says the latest version of its Qwen 2.5 artificial intelligence model can take on fellow Chinese firm DeepSeek's V3 as well as the top models from U.S. rivals OpenAI and Meta.

Analysts say China’s AI investment is just beginning to pay off, with more firms expected to launch their own models soon.

Chinese e-commerce juggernaut Alibaba Group Holding’s (NYSE:BABA) cloud unit released a new family of AI models, Qwen2.5-VL, that can parse files, comprehend videos, count objects in images, and control a PC.