By Saritha Rai

(Bloomberg) — Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA), the Chinese e-commerce player that has become a leader in artificial intelligence, is stepping up a push into software coding tools, offering low-cost access to several of the country’s top AI models.

The cloud unit of the Hangzhou-based company said it is selling a coding tool built atop open-source models like Alibaba’s own Qwen 3.5, as well as offerings from local startups Zhipu AI, Moonshot AI and MiniMax Group Inc., and users are allowed to switch freely between these models. The promotion for a lite version is for 7.9 yuan ($1.15) for the first month and then 40 yuan in subsequent months. The pro version of coding access begins at 39.9 yuan for the first month and then 200 yuan.

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AI coding tools have been closely tracked in recent weeks because offerings from the likes of Anthropic PBC have set of waves of investor selling in potentially vulnerable sectors. Cybersecurity stocks, for example, tumbled this week after the startup introduced a new security feature with its Claude model, while International Business Machines Corp. sank the most since 2000 after Anthropic said Claude Code could modernize Cobol, a dated programming language that’s run on IBM computers.

Alibaba is making an aggressive push into artificial intelligence in a dramatic pivot from its traditional focus on online commerce. The company’s Qwen offerings have won plaudits for their high performance and for an open-source approach that allows low-cost access for users.

Alibaba unveiled a major update of its flagship AI model earlier this month, aiming to get in ahead of an expected upgrade from the star upstart DeepSeek. Qwen 3.5 is designed to support AI agent tasks and can understand text, photo and video inputs. It is able to analyze videos as long as two hours, it added.

Eddie Wu, chief executive officer, said a year ago that the company’s primary objective is now artificial general intelligence or AGI. That target — powerful, hypothetical AI systems that could emulate or match human thinking capabilities — is a striking departure from Alibaba’s traditional business.

—With assistance from Zheping Huang.

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