Alibaba’s Qwen lab launches robotics unit to drive embodied AI
With leading AI models and new robotics ventures, Alibaba is positioning itself at the forefront of China’s embodied intelligence revolution.
Alibaba Group has established a robotics AI team within its Qwen lab, marking a significant step in its strategy to expand into AI-powered hardware.
However, this move reflects China’s broader push to lead in robotics and embodied intelligence, increasingly driven by generative AI and multimodal foundation models.
Qwen researcher Lin Junyang revealed the creation of the robotics unit on social media, describing it as part of Alibaba’s efforts to move AI from the virtual to the physical world.
The lab’s Qwen series has already achieved global prominence, with seven models ranking among the world’s top ten on Hugging Face, including the multimodal Qwen3-Omni in first place.
Group chairman Joe Tsai recently stressed that success in AI depends less on model scale and more on how rapidly technologies are adopted. He argued that China is focused on cost-effective, open-source AI models that can enable faster integration than the high-cost approach pursued in the US.
Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu Yongming confirmed plans to raise AI infrastructure investment to 380 billion yuan over three years to become a full-stack AI provider.
The company also invests in robotics ventures such as Unitree Robotics and X Square Robot, aligning its expansion with national industrial strategies and the country’s accelerating robotics leadership.
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