Max is the managing editor of THE DECODER, bringing his background in philosophy to explore questions of consciousness and whether machines truly think or just pretend to.
Alibaba has released Qwen3.6-Plus, its third proprietary AI model in just a few days. The model is available through the Alibaba Cloud Model Studio API and offers a context window of one million tokens. According to the Qwen team, the focus is on significantly improved capabilities for agentic coding, including frontend development and complex code tasks.
In benchmarks published by Alibaba, the model partially outperforms Anthropic's older flagship model Claude 4.5 Opus, which was replaced by the stronger 4.6 Opus in December 2025. It's worth noting that some of these measurements were conducted by Alibaba itself.
Qwen3.6-Plus outperforms the older 3.5 model and in some cases beats Opus. However, the Opus 4.6 released in December 2025 scores 65.4 percent on Terminal-Bench 2.0, putting it ahead of Qwen3.6-Plus. | Image: Alibaba
For a long time, Alibaba released its Qwen models as open source, but the company has recently changed course. The latest Qwen3.5-Omni is also not freely available. Alibaba wants to drive more revenue from enterprise customers with its proprietary models, as its cloud division faces intense competition from ByteDance.
According to Bloomberg, Alibaba is targeting $100 billion in AI revenue over the next five years. Qwen3.6-Plus will be integrated into the Qwen chatbot app and the company's new enterprise AI service Wukong.
Chinese chipmakers captured nearly 41 percent of China's AI accelerator server market in 2025, according to an IDC report seen by Reuters. IDC is a global market research firm specializing in the technology industry.
Nvidia remains the market leader with roughly 2.2 million cards shipped and a 55 percent market share, but the company is losing ground fast. In total, about 4 million AI accelerator cards were shipped in China, according to the report.
Chinese vendors shipped a combined 1.65 million cards. Huawei leads the domestic pack with about 812,000 chips, followed by Alibaba's chip unit T-Head at 265,000 cards. Baidu Kunlunxin and Cambricon are tied at 116,000 units each. AMD held just 4 percent of the market.
EU bars AI-generated content from official communications, according to Politico
Politico reports that the Commission, Parliament, and Council have barred their press teams from using fully AI-generated content. Experts see a missed opportunity.
Perplexity AI is facing a class-action lawsuit. The company is accused of sharing personal user data from chats with Meta and Google, Bloomberg reports. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in federal court in San Francisco.
According to the complaint, trackers are downloaded onto users' devices as soon as they log into Perplexity's home page. That is not unusual for many websites. What makes the allegation serious is the further claim: the trackers allegedly give Meta and Google access to conversations with the AI search engine. According to the lawsuit, this also applies when users enable "Incognito" mode.
The suit was filed on behalf of a man from Utah who says he shared financial and tax information with the chatbot. If certified, additional plaintiffs may join. Meta pointed to its policies, which prohibit advertisers from submitting sensitive data. Perplexity spokesperson Jesse Dwyer said the company has not been served with any such lawsuit. Google did not immediately comment.
AI infrastructure company Nebius Group is building a 310-megawatt data center in Lappeenranta, Finland, close to the Russian border. The project is valued at over $10 billion and would become one of the largest AI data centers in Europe. Finnish developer Polarnode is already constructing the facility, with a phased launch planned starting in 2027.
Nebius recently signed contracts totaling more than $40 billion with Microsoft and Meta. The new data center will train AI models and run AI applications but isn't tied to a single customer. Nebius picked Finland for its low energy prices, renewable power, and cool climate, all of which help cut cooling costs. The facility would be the company's largest site outside the US and is expected to cover roughly 10 percent of Nebius' total planned capacity, according to CEO Arkady Volozh.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on Monday requiring companies with state contracts to implement safeguards against AI misuse. Specifically, companies must ensure their AI systems don't generate illegal content, reinforce harmful biases, or violate civil rights. To prevent misinformation, state agencies will also be required to watermark AI-generated images and videos.
The order includes a separate provision for handling federal directives: if the U.S. federal government designates a company as a supply chain risk, California will conduct its own review and potentially continue working with that vendor. This comes in the wake of the Pentagon's designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk, which bars government contractors from using Anthropic's technology for U.S. military work.
Within 120 days, California's procurement and technology agencies are expected to develop recommendations for new AI certifications. These would let companies demonstrate compliance with responsible AI practices and public safety protections.
The executive order reinforces California's push to chart its own course on AI regulation, independent of the Trump administration, which has repeatedly tried to block independent state-level AI laws.
