Alibaba’s Qwen Tech Lead Junyang Lin Steps Down After Major AI Release

Junyang Lin, the technical lead for Qwen, has stepped down from his role at Alibaba Group, just one day after the company introduced its Qwen 3.5 small model series. The announcement, made by Lin on X, came without further explanation and prompted a wave of reactions from colleagues and the developer community.

Lin, who joined Alibaba in 2019 and became a central figure in its AI initiatives, oversaw the development of the Qwen model family, which underpins Alibaba’s core AI services. His departure coincided with a 5.3% drop in Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares, reflecting investor concern about the company’s AI direction.

During his tenure, Lin helped position Qwen among China’s leading open-weight AI systems, with models competing in performance against those from OpenAI and Anthropic. The latest Qwen 3.5 release includes multimodal small models ranging from 0.8B to 9B parameters, designed for tasks such as on-device inference and lightweight agentic operations.

The reasons behind Lin’s exit remain unclear. His resignation follows the recent departure of other team members, including Binyuan Hui, and comes as Alibaba continues its broader push to expand AI capabilities across its platforms and services.