Junyang Lin, a prominent technical leader behind Qwen, said he is stepping down from the project shortly after Alibaba unveiled a new series of Qwen 3.5 small models.
Lin announced the decision Tuesday in a post on X, stating he was “stepping down” from the Qwen project but providing no further explanation. According to his LinkedIn profile, Lin joined Alibaba in July 2019 and became part of the Qwen team in April 2023.
Departure Comes After New Model Launch
The announcement came just one day after Alibaba introduced the Qwen 3.5 Small Model series, which includes four models with 0.8 billion, 2 billion, 4 billion and 9 billion parameters.
Alibaba said the models are native multimodal systems designed for applications ranging from lightweight AI agents to on-device deployment.
The release drew attention from figures in the AI community, including Elon Musk, who wrote on X that the models demonstrated “impressive intelligence density.”
Qwen’s Role In Global AI Competition
Alibaba introduced the Qwen model family in April 2023 and opened it to public use later that year after receiving regulatory approval in China.
The project has become one of China’s most visible open-weight AI efforts, with benchmark performance often compared with models from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic.
The sudden leadership change occurs amid intensifying global competition among AI developers racing to build more advanced systems.
Industry Reactions To Lin’s Exit
Colleagues and industry partners reacted strongly to the news, describing Lin as central to the Qwen project’s development.
Wenting Zhao, a researcher on the Qwen team, described his departure as “the end of an era” in a post thanking him for his contributions to open source AI and engineering progress.
Yuchen Jin, chief technology officer of AI infrastructure startup Hyperbolic, said Lin played a key role in connecting Qwen with the global developer community and supporting collaboration during model releases.
Tiezhen Wang from Hugging Face also described the departure as “an immense loss” for the project.
Unclear Circumstances Behind Departure
The reasons for Lin’s exit remain unclear. Lin did not respond to requests for comment.
Chen Cheng, a contributor to the project, wrote on X that he was “heartbroken,” adding that the team had been collaborating on model launches only hours before the news emerged.
Another Qwen team member, Binyuan Hui, updated his X profile to describe himself as “formerly MTS @Alibaba_Qwen.” It is not yet clear whether he has also left the company.
Alibaba did not respond to questions regarding the circumstances of Lin’s departure or the current leadership structure of the Qwen team.
Featured image credits: djreprints.com
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