Alibaba shares gain as Qwen AI wins approval for Apple integration in China
Alibaba’s U.S. shares climbed after securing regulatory approval to power Apple Intelligence in China, marking a rare breakthrough in the escalating technology rivalry between Washington and Beijing.
U.S.-listed shares of Chinese conglomerate Alibaba rose 4 percent in premarket trading Wednesday after the company confirmed its Qwen artificial intelligence model will be integrated into Apple systems in China. The ADRs were last seen 3.7 percent higher as investors digested the regulatory breakthrough.
An Alibaba spokesperson stated that Qwen will be integrated into Apple Intelligence experiences across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS for users in China. This integration allows users to access capabilities such as text and image understanding and generation without needing to jump between tools.
The development follows the Cyberspace Administration of China adding Apple AI services to its list of approved providers. This roster also features products from domestic technology firms like Huawei, ending a prolonged approval process that began when the offering was first announced in 2024.
This partnership emerges against a backdrop of intensifying technological rivalry between the United States and China. Both nations are actively racing for dominance in artificial intelligence, leading to increased regulatory scrutiny on cross-border technology deployments.
Friction in the sector remains high. Earlier this month, Alibaba prohibited its employees from using Anthropic’s AI tools, while United States lawmakers have explored measures to curb the adoption of Chinese AI models by domestic companies. Furthermore, Meta was reportedly forced to unwind a $2 billion acquisition of the Chinese company Manus following a directive from Beijing.
The integration also aligns with broader industry efforts to deploy powerful AI directly on mobile hardware. Apple is currently in discussions with a small Silicon Valley startup focused on compressing large language models for on-device iPhone execution.
Highlighting this technical shift, PrismML, a Khosla Ventures-backed spinout from the California Institute of Technology, publicly released compressed versions of Alibaba’s open-source Qwen model on Tuesday. The startup successfully reduced the model from approximately 54 gigabytes to under 4 gigabytes.
This compression enables all 27 billion of the model’s parameters to run locally on an iPhone 15 or newer. Apple has been approached for comment regarding its broader AI strategy and the specific integration timeline.
