Alibaba plans revenue share for commercial use of open-source model

According to Reuters, Alibaba plans to charge large commercial users of its next-generation Qwen open-source model, taking a share of their revenue. The model, Qwen3.8-Max, is an open-weight model, allowing developers to download and run or modify it.

Similar practices have already been implemented by Moonshot AI with its Kimi K3 model. Under Kimi K3's license, any entity selling the model as a service with annual sales over $20 million must sign a commercial agreement with Moonshot AI, with revenue sharing up to 30%.

Alibaba plans to introduce similar measures next week, but the exact percentage is unclear. Cloud company DigitalOcean has signed a commercial agreement with Moonshot AI, and its CEO called it a proven open-source "freemium" model. Currently, Alibaba charges for hosting models on its cloud platform, but customers running most open-source models in their own data centers pay nothing.