Prime Highlights-
- Alibaba to seek revenue share from major users of its next open source Qwen model.
- Move follows Moonshot’s Kimi K3, which requires revenue sharing above $20 million in sales.
Key Facts-
- Moonshot seeks up to 30 percent revenue share, Alibaba’s rate still under discussion.
- Kimi K3 priced at about a third of Anthropic’s Fable model per token costs.
Background-
Chinese technology giant Alibaba plans to seek a share of revenue from major users of the next version of its Qwen open-source AI model, according to people familiar with the company’s plans.
The move follows a similar step by Chinese AI startup Moonshot, whose Kimi K3 model carries licensing terms requiring anyone offering the model as a paid service and generating more than $20 million in annual sales to reach a commercial agreement with the company.
Alibaba is set to roll out a comparable measure for its Qwen3.8-Max model, an open-source, open-weight offering that allows developers to download and adapt its underlying settings, unlike the closed-source approach taken by US developers OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.
Alibaba has so far charged developers who use its models through its own cloud computing platform, while allowing most of its open-source offerings to run free of charge in customers’ own data centers. The shift points to Chinese AI firms converging on a shared business model as they compete for market share against US rivals.
Moonshot’s licensing terms call for revenue sharing of up to 30 percent, according to sources, while Alibaba’s exact rate remains under discussion. Chinasoft International, a Chinese IT services provider, disclosed a revenue-sharing arrangement with Moonshot in a regulatory filing without specifying the percentage.
Industry executives describe the approach as a familiar open-source freemium model, where companies offer software at low or no cost initially, then charge for heavy commercial use and added services.
DigitalOcean Chief Executive Paddy Srinivasan confirmed a commercial agreement with Moonshot, while Together AI Vice President Dan Fu said value in the space comes from optimizing how companies use AI tokens.
Kimi K3 is priced at roughly a third of Anthropic’s Fable model based on listed input and output token costs. Open-source AI continues to expand, with US firms including Thinking Machines Lab, founded by OpenAI’s former Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, and Fireworks AI also entering the space.