Alibaba to Impose Revenue Share Fees on Commercial Users of the Qwen AI Model

Huoxing Finance reports, according to Reuters, that Alibaba plans to require heavy commercial users of its next-generation open-source AI model, Qwen, to share a portion of their revenue. This approach mirrors the model adopted by Moonshot AI with Kimi K3: Kimi K3’s licensing terms stipulate that if the model is sold as a service and annual revenue exceeds $20 million, users must negotiate a commercial agreement with Moonshot AI, reportedly with revenue-sharing rates of up to 30%. Alibaba’s specific revenue-sharing ratio is still under discussion. The report notes that such revenue-sharing agreements are gradually taking shape between Chinese AI companies and U.S. cloud platforms. Several U.S. cloud providers, including DigitalOcean, have already entered commercial agreements with Moonshot AI. In terms of pricing, Kimi K3’s input/output token costs are approximately one-third of those for Anthropic’s Fable model. Additionally, Thinking Machines Lab, founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has joined the open-source movement, releasing its first open-source model last month. This signals that Chinese AI companies are exploring sustainable commercialization pathways for open-source models through a freemium model—offering open-source access for free while charging for commercial use.