Elon Musk Praised Alibaba's LLM. Then Its Leader Quit: 'Bye My Beloved Qwen'

Lin Junyang, head of Alibaba Group‘s (NYSE:BABA) (NYSE:BABAF) Qwen artificial intelligence division, announced on Tuesday that he is stepping down.

The announcement comes just two days after the company rolled out its updated AI products.

Lin posted on X: “me stepping down. bye my beloved qwen.”

Two other team members followed Junyang’s exit.

Binyuan Hui, a research scientist at Alibaba Qwen Team, posted “bye qwen, me too.”

Kaixin Li, a core contributor to Qwen 3.5, also signed off, noting that Lin had been the driving force behind a potential Qwen Singapore base and writing, "Now that he’s gone, there’s no reason left to stay."

Musk-Backed Launch Amplifies Exit

Alibaba launched four Qwen 3.5 Small Models—0.6B, 2B, 4B, and 9B parameters—built as native multimodal models for on-device AI and lightweight agents.

The launch drew Elon Musk, who wrote on X that the models showed “impressive intelligence density.”

Lin responded simply: “thx elon!” — before announcing his resignation the same day.

Explosive User Growth Raises Stakes

The departure also comes as Qwen's mobile app surged to 203 million monthly active users in February, up from 31.05 million in January, according to AICPB.com, which tracks AI products.

A successor has not yet been named.

Alibaba Market Standing

Alibaba Group has a market capitalization of $323.71 billion, with a 52-week high of $192.67 and a 52-week low of $95.73.

The stock of the Chinese multinational technology conglomerate has a Relative Strength Index (RSI) of 23.57.

Benzinga’s Edge Stock Rankings indicate BABA stock has a Value score of 86.59.

Photo Courtesy: QINQIE99 on Shutterstock.com

Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.