Alibaba’s Qwen-3 becomes world’s first AI model to operate in orbit

South China Morning PostCenter-RightEN 1 min read 100% complete by Eunice XuJanuary 27, 2026 at 09:00 AM
Alibaba’s Qwen-3 becomes world’s first AI model to operate in orbit

AI Summary

short article 1 min

Alibaba Cloud's Qwen-3 became the first general-purpose AI model to operate in orbit, deployed by Chinese aerospace start-up Adaspace Technology in November. The model was uploaded to Adaspace's space computing center, part of their "Star-Compute Project," a planned 2,800-satellite network for AI processing. Qwen-3 successfully executed inference tasks in orbit, completing the entire process of query upload, on-orbit inference, and result transmission in under two minutes. Adaspace's initial space computing center, launched in May of last year, is comprised of 12 satellites and represents the world's first AI computing satellite constellation. This marks a significant step for China in the emerging space-based computing sector.

Keywords

qwen-3 100% ai model 90% space computing 80% alibaba cloud 70% artificial intelligence 70% orbit 70% adaspace technology 60% satellite network 60% ai inference 50% star-compute project 40%

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South China Morning Post
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China

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