Alibaba is preparing to launch its Qwen 4 flagship model family, but according to Startup Fortune, the company’s long-running open-source promise now faces real doubt. As of November 3, 2026, no release post, model weights, model card, license, benchmark results, or official price had surfaced in the records reviewed. Alibaba Cloud CTO Feifei Li reportedly told the audience at the October 29 Apsara Conference event that the Qwen4 family would launch “next week,” a window that opened on Monday, November 2. Alibaba’s September 22 press release said only that Qwen 4 was in training. Four variant names appeared at the event: Max, Plus, Flash and 27B. The article also references Qwen3.8-Flash-Next as a 125B preview and an FP8 build, Alibaba’s open-source numbers, and a report that the company wants a revenue share from big commercial users. It separates what Alibaba has confirmed from what the market is assuming and closes with predictions and a practical checklist for teams that build on Qwen models today.