TL;DR
China approved Alibaba’s Qwen to power Apple Intelligence across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS. PrismML compressed the model to run on an iPhone 15.
The Cyberspace Administration approved Apple AI services alongside Huawei. A Khosla-backed startup compressed Qwen from 54GB to under 4GB to run on-device.
China approved Alibaba’s Qwen to power Apple Intelligence across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS. PrismML compressed the model to run on an iPhone 15.
Alibaba confirmed on Wednesday that its Qwen AI model will be integrated into Apple Intelligence across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS for users in China. “Qwen will be integrated into Apple Intelligence experiences,” an Alibaba spokesperson told CNBC. China’s Cyberspace Administration included Apple AI services on a list of approved providers alongside products from Huawei and other domestic companies.
Alibaba’s US-listed shares rose 3.7% on the news. The approval ends a long regulatory process that began when Apple first announced its AI suite in 2024. Apple Intelligence briefly appeared on Chinese iPhones without approval in March, exposing the company to regulatory risk before the features were pulled. The deal with Alibaba was struck in February 2025, but Beijing’s content filtering requirements and security evaluation process delayed the rollout for over a year.
The integration gives Chinese users access to Qwen’s text and image understanding and generation capabilities without switching between tools. It arrives as the US-China technology rivalry intensifies. Alibaba recently banned employees from using Anthropic’s Claude, US lawmakers are considering how to curb Chinese AI model adoption by American companies, and Meta was reportedly forced to dismantle its $2 billion acquisition of Chinese company Manus after Beijing ordered the deal unwound.
Separately, PrismML, a Khosla Ventures-backed spinout from Caltech, released compressed versions of Alibaba’s open-source Qwen model on Tuesday. The company said it reduced the model from roughly 54GB to under 4GB, allowing all 27 billion parameters to run on an iPhone 15 or newer. Apple is reportedly in talks with PrismML about the compression technology. Alibaba has been at the centre of AI geopolitics after Anthropic accused it of running the largest distillation campaign against Claude, making the Qwen-Apple partnership both a commercial deal and a geopolitical signal about which AI models will power the world’s most valuable consumer devices in China.
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