Alibaba Rises Over 4% Premarket, Tongyi Qianwen Model to Be Integrated Into Apple Intelligence

TradingKey - On July 15, Eastern Time, an announcement from the Cyberspace Administration of China showed that "Apple Intelligence" has passed the generative artificial intelligence service registration. Alibaba ( BABA) subsequently confirmed that Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen will be integrated into Apple Intelligence as an AI capability to serve iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS users in China. Without needing to switch back and forth between apps, users can directly use Qianwen's text and image comprehension, content generation, and other functions on Apple ( AAPL) devices.

Boosted by the news, Alibaba's US shares rose over 6% in pre-market trading to $119.3, compared with a closing price of $112.32 in the previous trading session. As of press time, Alibaba was up 4.32% in pre-market trading.

[Source: Futu]

In addition, according to people familiar with the matter, Apple and Baidu will collaborate to develop a mainland China version of "Apple Intelligence" features. Baidu will focus on building an AI search function that supports text and image processing, thereby comprehensively upgrading the Chinese version of the Siri voice assistant.

Tongyi Qianwen is a large language model launched by Alibaba in April 2023, currently iterated to the Qwen2.5 version. Alibaba Cloud disclosed that Qwen2.5's performance in benchmarks such as MMLU and GSM8K is already close to mainstream international models. On Hugging Face's open-source community leaderboard, several Qwen derivative models have long ranked near the top.

This partnership with Apple means Alibaba's large language model can directly reach hundreds of millions of Apple users. Previously, domestic large models in China mostly reached users through corporate API calls or independent apps; this integration into the operating system level offers lower response latency and deeper system interaction. For Alibaba, this represents a step for its AI capabilities from exporting technology to covering end-users.

Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu has publicly stated multiple times that AI is one of the most important strategic directions for Alibaba over the next decade, and the group will continue to invest in large model research and development as well as scenario application. Tongyi Qianwen was previously used in Alibaba's internal e-commerce, office, and cloud computing businesses, and this partnership with Apple provides it with an important scenario for external commercialization.

For Apple, finding a local AI partner in China is essentially an unavoidable choice. Since the launch of Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024, Apple has partnered with OpenAI in the US market, but overseas AI models cannot directly offer services in China due to data compliance regulations, leaving Apple with no choice but to find local vendors.

In recent years, Apple's market share in China has been squeezed by local brands like Huawei and vivo, and AI features are seen as one of the key variables for the next-generation iPhone to retain users in the Chinese market.

For Alibaba, this partnership is not just about opening up a new AI commercialization path, but also about verifying whether on-device deployment of large models is viable. If the user experience of Qianwen on the iPhone holds up, Alibaba may replicate this cooperation model with other smartphone manufacturers and smart terminals.

Over the past two years, Alibaba has been building an AI product matrix. In addition to Tongyi Qianwen, Alibaba Cloud has also launched the AI development platform Bailian and model deployment tools for enterprises. However, compared with other domestic large model developers, the presence of Alibaba's AI capabilities on the consumer side has not been very strong. This partnership with Apple provides a direct channel to reach consumer users. The market is waiting to see if there will be further disclosures from Apple and Alibaba around the autumn product launch events.