Alibaba Group Holding’s Qwen AI models are winning over major Western firms like Airbnb, underscoring the growing global appeal of China’s open-source approach to artificial intelligence.
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Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of the San Francisco-based online accommodation booking giant, said Airbnb “relies heavily” on Alibaba’s Qwen models to power its AI-driven customer service agent, according to a Bloomberg report on Tuesday.
Chesky, a friend of OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman, said ChatGPT’s integration abilities were not “quite ready” for Airbnb’s needs. In contrast, Alibaba’s Qwen model was “very good” and “also fast and cheap”, he said. Alibaba owns the Post.
While Airbnb uses 13 different AI models – including those from OpenAI and Google – to develop its service bot, Chesky’s comments highlighted how open-source models, which developers can modify to fit specific needs, were increasingly challenging closed-source incumbents like those from OpenAI.
Chinese tech companies, from Alibaba to DeepSeek, are rapidly releasing advanced, cost-effective open-source AI systems. Alibaba chairman Joe Tsai recently said the winner in AI should be determined by “who can adopt it faster”, not “who comes up with the strongest AI model”.
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