TLDR
- Chinese regulators approved Apple Intelligence for release in China, pairing it with Alibaba’s Qwen AI model
- Alibaba (BABA) rose over 5% in premarket trading, hitting $118.64; Apple (AAPL) gained close to 1%
- The Cyberspace Administration of China approved seven generative AI services including Apple, Huawei, and Xiaomi
- Qwen AI will be available across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS for Chinese users, enabling text and image features
- Apple is reportedly in early talks with PrismML to compress Qwen’s model to run natively on iPhone 15 and newer
China’s Cyberspace Administration gave Apple Intelligence the green light on Wednesday, adding it to a list of approved generative AI providers alongside Huawei, Xiaomi, Samsung, and others.
Alibaba confirmed its Qwen AI model will power Apple Intelligence for users in China, available across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. Alibaba’s U.S.-listed stock rose 5.63% in premarket trading to $118.64. Apple gained close to 1%.
Alibaba Group Holding Limited, BABA
The approval ends a wait that stretched back to 2024, when Apple first unveiled its AI suite. The technology was substantially reworked in the interim, after Apple moved away from its original setup and rebuilt the system using Alphabet’s Google Gemini models before ultimately partnering with Alibaba for the China market.
Qwen will support text and image recognition and generation for Chinese iPhone users. That puts hundreds of millions of Apple device users within reach of Alibaba’s AI assistant.
Apple has been working to close the gap with Huawei in China, where it has faced pressure in recent years. The AI rollout is seen as a key piece of that effort.
For Alibaba, the partnership opens a major new distribution channel. Qwen has been integrated into Taobao, Tmall, and other Alibaba platforms, but reaching iPhone users directly is a different scale of exposure.
Apple Eyes On-Device AI Compression
CNBC reported Tuesday that Apple is in early-stage talks with PrismML, a Caltech spinout backed by Khosla Ventures, about compression technology that could shrink Alibaba’s open-source Qwen 3.6 model from roughly 54 GB to under 4 GB.
If successful, the compression would allow a 27-billion-parameter model to run entirely on an iPhone 15 or newer device, without needing a cloud connection.
“They’re really evaluating our technology right now. Things are progressing nicely,” PrismML CEO Babak Hassibi told CNBC.
No Launch Date Set Yet
Neither Apple nor Alibaba provided a timeline for when the AI features will start appearing on devices following the regulatory clearance.
The approval puts Apple on the same list as major domestic Chinese tech players. Doubao, Vivo BlueOnDevice, and Oppo AndesGPT were also among the seven services approved in the same batch.
Alibaba has been pushing Qwen deeper into its own ecosystem while positioning Alibaba Cloud as core infrastructure for China’s AI sector. The Apple deal adds to that effort at a high-profile level.
At 5:00 am ET on Wednesday, Alibaba’s stock was trading at $118.64, up 5.63% from the prior close.
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