Alibaba recruits Google DeepMind contributor to join Qwen AI team, sources say

Alibaba Group Holding has recruited a research scientist from Google DeepMind to bolster development efforts for its Qwen artificial intelligence models, in an internal restructuring that has seen the departure of previous technical lead Lin Junyang.While no successor to Lin was announced, former Google senior staff research scientist Zhou Hao was joining Alibaba as head of post-training research, replacing Yu Bowen, who also departed this week, two sources said.Zhou, who holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was a key contributor to the US tech giant’s acclaimed proprietary AI products, including Gemini 3, AI Mode and Deep Research, according to his LinkedIn profile.In recent months, Alibaba has accelerated efforts to monetise growing global adoption of its models. It launched its flagship AI consumer app Qwen in November, powered by the company’s biggest Qwen-Max models, which have remained proprietary. Alibaba owns the China-morning-post" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="12558" data-entity-type="organization">South China Morning Post.To streamline its commercial AI strategy, which now includes the Qwen app and AI glasses, Alibaba recently merged these different units under one organisational umbrella.Alibaba did not respond to a request for comment.A long-standing proponent of open-source AI development, Lin pushed Alibaba to pursue this strategy as early as 2023, two years before the practice of releasing model weights publicly – allowing users to freely download and modify them – became widespread in China’s AI industry following the rise of DeepSeek.