Alibaba's Qwen AI division head becomes latest exec to leave this year

By Che Pan and Laurie ‌Chen

BEIJING, March ​4 (Reuters) - ​The head of Alibaba Group's Qwen artificial intelligence model division, Lin Junyang, said on Wednesday he ‌would be stepping down from his role, becoming ⁠the third senior Qwen executive to depart this year.

"Bye my beloved Qwen," ‌Lin wrote in a ‌post on X, without providing further explanation.

Yu Bowen, who headed post-training for Qwen, also resigned on Wednesday, Chinese media ​outlet LatePost reported.

That follows the departure of Hui Binyuan, a staff research scientist focused on coding, in ⁠January.

The three men did not respond to requests for comment. Alibaba also did not ​respond to requests for comment on the departures.

Alibaba's shares were down 4% in Wednesday afternoon ​trade, underperforming a 2.8% slide for ‌the Hong Kong market that was swept up in a broad selloff as investors fretted ⁠over the impact of the Iran war.

Lin's exit comes two days after Qwen released updated products.

Monthly active users for Qwen's mobile ⁠app surged to 203 million in February from 31.05 million in January. ​It now ranks third globally behind OpenAI's ChatGPT and ByteDance's Doubao app, according to AICPB.com, which tracks AI products.

The jump came after ‌Chinese tech giants launched aggressive campaigns to draw more users to their apps during the ‌Lunar New Year holidays.

Alibaba has released more than 400 open-source ⁠Qwen models since 2023. ‌The models have been ​downloaded over 1 billion times.

(Reporting by Che Pan, Laurie Chen and Brenda Goh; Editing by Edwina ‌Gibbs)

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