Alibaba's Qwen AI team is undergoing significant leadership changes with the sudden resignation of lead researcher Junyang Lin. The departure appears linked to an internal reorganization where a Google Gemini veteran was put in charge of Qwen. This raises questions about the future direction of the open-weight Qwen 3.5 model family following the loss of its key technical leader.
Background
Qwen is Alibaba's family of open-weight AI models that compete with other major AI systems. The project has gained significant attention in the open-source AI community for its technical capabilities.
- Source
- Simon Willison
- Published
- Mar 4, 2026 at 11:50 PM
- Score
- 6.0 / 10