Alibaba news · Silicon AI News

November 20261 story

Apple Intelligence reaches China in December, with Qwen

Apple’s own models run the features, and Alibaba’s Qwen helps in Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence. Developers can test it from November 4, and only iPhones get it for now.

Apple said on October 31 that its first Apple Intelligence features are coming to iPhone users in China. Developers can test them in the latest iOS beta from November 4, and the public release follows in December with iOS 27.3. Through a partnership with Alibaba, its Qwen model adds answers in Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence.

3 min read

October 20263 stories

Agents & AppsOct 16

Apple Intelligence test due in China this month, Cook says

Tim Cook, now Apple’s executive chairman, told China’s The Paper that Live Translation, Writing Tools and Clean Up come first, without Siri AI. Bloomberg reports a public release in December; Apple has not confirmed it.

Apple executive chairman Tim Cook told The Paper, a state-backed news site in Shanghai, on October 15 that Apple has approval to bring the first Apple Intelligence features to users in China. He said a test version will come later in October. Siri AI is not part of it.

3 min read

Chips & InfrastructureOct 13

Alibaba starts selling its Qwen N1 AI glasses in China

The glasses run Alibaba’s Qwen assistant and cost from 2,218 yuan after subsidies and launch discounts. The N1 Pro adds eye control and payment by iris scan, Alibaba says.

Alibaba’s N1 and N1 Pro AI glasses went on sale in China on October 13, after pre-orders opened on September 22. Both have a 50-megapixel camera and batteries that can be swapped, and they run Alibaba’s Qwen assistant for tasks such as translation and notes. Alibaba also showed Qwen Clip, AI earbuds tuned with Bose.

3 min read

AI ModelsOct 11

Microsoft launches Decision-1, a fast model for AI choices

The model is built on Alibaba’s open Qwen3.5-9B and costs the same as Jev. Microsoft says it beat its rivals on 36 tests, and no outside group has checked that yet.

Microsoft released Microsoft-Decision-1 on October 9. It is a small model that scores a fixed list of options, such as yes or no, and gives a probability for each. It runs in Microsoft Foundry and on OpenRouter for $0.042 per million input tokens. Microsoft says it will soon rebuild it on its own models and on OpenAI’s.

3 min read

September 20262 stories

Chips & InfrastructureSep 28

China may let firms buy Nvidia’s RTX Pro 5500, report says

The Information reports the ministry asked ByteDance and Alibaba about their purchase plans. Reuters could not verify the report, and the card is not on sale yet.

China’s tech ministry asked companies including ByteDance and Alibaba to report their plans to buy Nvidia’s RTX Pro 5500, The Information reported on September 27. It told some of them that it intends to approve the purchases, according to the report. Reuters could not verify the report. An Nvidia spokesperson said US firms remain restricted by outdated US export controls and by China’s own limits on imports.

4 min read

Chips & InfrastructureSep 23

Alibaba calls its Zhenwu V900 China’s most powerful AI chip

It has published no tests to prove it.

At its Apsara conference on September 22, Alibaba showed the Zhenwu V900, a chip for training and running AI. It says the chip has three times the performance of May’s M890 and will be mass-produced from early 2027. It also plans Qwen models with 5 to 10 trillion parameters.

5 min read