In a strategy shift, Alibaba’s flagship Qwen3.8-Max model comes with terms for certain companies using it to generate revenue
2-MIN READ2-MINMinxiao Changin ShenzhenPublished: 9:30pm, 13 Aug 2026Alibaba Group Holding has made the core files of its latest flagship AI model Qwen3.8-Max free for anyone to download, as the tech giant introduces new rules requiring large companies to pay for a separate commercial licence to use it.
The terms apply to users or their affiliates running a “model as a service” or “AI work assistant” business whose aggregate revenue exceeds US$50 million over any consecutive 12-month period. They are required to obtain a separate licence from Qwen before using the model or its derivatives for commercial purposes.
Internal use is exempt from the licence, as long as the software, its outputs or its underlying model capabilities are not made available to third parties.
The latest move allows most developers to use, copy, modify and distribute Qwen3.8-Max, with its massive 2.4 trillion parameters, without paying Alibaba, though they must bear the compute costs themselves.
Meanwhile, access via paid application programming interfaces (APIs) is also available. In China, the API costs 12 yuan (US$1.80) per million input tokens and 36 yuan per million output tokens. Internationally, the rates are US$2 per million input tokens and US$6 per million output tokens. At these prices, Qwen3.8-Max’s input and output rates are about 40 per cent and 24 per cent, respectively, of Claude Opus 5 from Anthropic.
