Alibaba’s Qwen tech lead steps down after major AI push

Source: TechCrunch

Background

Junyang Lin, a central technical leader on Alibaba’s Qwen team, announced on X that he was “stepping down” from the project — without providing further details. He joined Alibaba in July 2019 and became part of the Qwen team in April 2023, according to his LinkedIn profile.

His abrupt departure has drawn strong reactions from colleagues and industry partners amid intensifying global competition among AI developers.

Qwen 3.5 Small Model launch

On Monday, Alibaba introduced its Qwen 3.5 Small Model series, offering four models with 0.8 B, 2 B, 4 B, and 9 B parameters. The company describes these as native multimodal models designed for on‑device AI deployment and lightweight agents. The announcement was made on X — see the official post.

The launch attracted attention from notable figures in the AI community, including Elon Musk, who wrote on X that the models demonstrated “impressive intelligence density” — see his comment here.

Reactions to Lin’s departure

• Wenting Zhao, research scientist on the Qwen team, called Lin’s exit “the end of an era” and thanked him for advancing open‑source AI and engineering. Source
• Yuchen Jin, CTO of AI infrastructure startup Hyperbolic, highlighted Lin’s role in connecting Qwen with the global developer community and recalled late‑night collaborations during model launches. Source
• Tiezhen Wang, head of APAC ecosystem at Hugging Face, described the departure as “an immense loss” for the project. Source
• Chen Cheng, a contributor to Qwen, expressed being “heartbroken” and wrote, “I know leaving wasn’t your choice,” noting the team had been working together on model launches only hours earlier. Source
• Binyuan Hui, another team member, updated his X profile to state “formerly MTS @Alibaba_Qwen,” though it is unclear whether he has left the company. Profile

Unclear circumstances

The reasons behind Lin’s departure remain unspecified. Lin did not respond to requests for comment, and Alibaba declined to comment on the move or the current leadership structure of the Qwen team.