cd /news/artificial-intelligence/alibaba-releases-open-qwen3-8-with-2… · home topics artificial-intelligence article
[ARTICLE · art-93946] src=runtimewire.com ↗ pub= topic=artificial-intelligence verified=true sentiment=· neutral

Alibaba releases open Qwen3.8 with 2.4T total, 95B active parameters

Alibaba released the open-source Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B model weights on August 12, a 2.4-trillion-parameter sparse mixture-of-experts model with about 95 billion active parameters per token, making it the first Qwen-Max-class model released openly. The text-only checkpoint requires thinking mode, supports a 262,144-token native context extendable to 1,010,000 tokens, and is compatible with Hugging Face Transformers, vLLM, SGLang, and TokenSpeed. The hosted Qwen3.8-Max on Qwen Cloud adds vision input, non-thinking mode, and built-in tools, but independent benchmarks for the open checkpoint are not provided.

read2 min views1 publishedAug 12, 2026
Alibaba releases open Qwen3.8 with 2.4T total, 95B active parameters
Image: Runtimewire (auto-discovered)

Developers and infrastructure teams can now download the model weights for Qwen3.8, the latest release from Alibaba's large-model program. Alibaba published the Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B weights on August 12. Qwen calls it the first Qwen-Max-class model released openly in its Qwen3.8 announcement.

The repository provides Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B as model weights and configuration files in Hugging Face Transformers format, with compatibility for vLLM, SGLang and TokenSpeed. Qwen separately offers Qwen3.8-Max through Qwen Cloud. According to Qwen's repository and cloud documentation, that hosted version supports vision input, non-thinking mode and built-in tools.

What Qwen released

Qwen's repository describes Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B as a 2.4-trillion-parameter sparse mixture-of-experts model with about 95 billion parameters activated per token. Its 92 layers contain 512 experts, with 10 routed experts and one shared expert active at a time. That design increases the model's stored capacity without using all 2.4 trillion parameters for every inference step.

The repository says the open checkpoint is text-only, requires thinking mode and supports a native 262,144-token context that can be extended to 1,010,000 tokens. Its reasoning_effort

setting supports xhigh

by default, medium

and low

. A separate preserve_thinking

control retains reasoning context from earlier messages.

The model card lists support for Hugging Face Transformers, SGLang, vLLM and TokenSpeed.

This is far removed from the local-development case for smaller Qwen releases. RuntimeWire reported in June that Qwen 3.6 27B had become practical for local coding work. Qwen3.8's large parameter count creates a substantial storage requirement before an operator accounts for serving memory, compute and inference throughput.

The open checkpoint is narrower than Qwen3.8-Max

The downloadable checkpoint is text-only and always operates in thinking mode. It does not accept image or video inputs, and developers cannot disable its reasoning mode through the documented interface.

According to Qwen's model repository, Qwen3.8-Max adds vision input, non-thinking mode, built-in tools and a default 1-million-token context window. The same repository directs users seeking managed, scalable inference without infrastructure maintenance to Qwen Cloud.

The two releases give developers a downloadable text model and a hosted Max product with additional input modes and tools.

The repository links to a model-specific license

The repository links to a Qwen3.8-specific license file. The supplied materials do not include the license text, so its commercial-use conditions cannot be summarized here.

What the published benchmarks establish

The supplied materials do not establish independent benchmark results for the downloadable Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B checkpoint, while Qwen's model card reports company-run comparisons for the hosted Qwen3.8-Max version. Those comparisons cover coding, agent and general-capability tests under varying harnesses, run counts and evaluation conditions. Performance and operating costs for third-party deployments of the downloadable checkpoint therefore remain unestablished by the supplied evidence.

── more in #artificial-intelligence 4 stories · sorted by recency
── more on @alibaba 3 stories trending now
sponsored brought to you by zahid.host 4,200+ EU-deployed projects
reading about agents? ship yours in a single git push.

Run your AI side-project on zahid.host

EU-based hosting, git-push deploys, automatic HTTPS, no cold starts. Free tier with a custom domain — perfect for shipping the agent you just read about.

$git push zahid main
Live at https://your-agent.zahid.host
Get free account → Pricing
from €0/mo · no card required
LIVE [news/alibaba-releases-ope…] indexed:0 read:2min 2026-08-12 ·