Tech Chief of Alibaba's Qwen Team Abruptly Steps Down

Lin Junyang, the technical leader of Alibaba Group's Qwen AI model team, announced his departure from the team on social media in the early hours of today.

As of press time, Lin has not disclosed his next move or a successor, and it remains unclear whether he will leave Alibaba entirely. Neither Lin nor Alibaba's official representatives have responded to requests for comment.

Multiple insiders described the move as unexpected, with one source stating, "It's a pity. He really loved Qwen."

The departure is widely believed to be tied to an ongoing organizational reshuffle within Alibaba's AI division. The Qwen team, directly led by Lin, falls under the Tongyi Lab headed by Zhou Jingren, CTO of Alibaba Cloud, reported tech media outlet LatePost.

In the latest restructuring, Tongyi Lab plans to split the integrated Qwen team into horizontally focused units covering pre-training, post-training, text, and multimodal capabilities. All units will remain under Tongyi Lab, but Lin's managerial scope will be significantly reduced.

The break-up of the unified model team runs counter to Lin's long-held views on technical strategy. Since last year, Lin has repeatedly argued that pre-training, post-training, infrastructure, and training teams should operate in tighter, more integrated coordination, said the report.

Lin, 33, is one of Alibaba's youngest P10-level technical leaders. He earned his bachelor's degree in computer science and a master's degree in linguistics and applied linguistics from Peking University.

Lin joined Alibaba DAMO Academy in 2019 as a senior algorithm engineer right after graduation. In late 2022, Alibaba consolidated DAMO's language and vision AI teams into Alibaba Cloud to form Tongyi Lab, and Lin was appointed technical leader of the Qwen model series.

Alibaba Group has recently rolled out an expanded lineup of its Qwen AI models, including a set of four open-source Qwen3.5 small models designed for lightweight, on-device use, drawing fresh attention in the global AI space. Industry figures such as Elon Musk took note of the release on social media, praising the new models for their “impressive intelligence density,” highlighting the growing competitiveness of Alibaba’s open-source efforts alongside Western counterparts.

Separately, Alibaba's Qwen AI glasses made their international debut at Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona on March 3, drawing long queues at a booth opposite Meta's display area and covering a larger footprint than its US rival.

The Qwen G1 glasses were shown publicly outside China for the first time. Attendees waited in groups to test the device, which Alibaba plans to launch in China on March 8 before a global rollout later this year. Industry attendees at the show cited the G1 as one of the most price-competitive AI wearables of 2026.