Alibaba Open-Sources Its AI Video Model Wan2.1 Series

Alibaba is making waves in the AI world by launching an open-source version of its video and image-generating AI model, Wan 2.1. This move is set to intensify competition in China's AI market, especially following DeepSeek's recent launch of its own open-source models.

Alibaba Cloud announced the open source release of four models in its Wan2.1 series of large video generation models. As an open source, it will be open to global academia, researchers, and commercial organizations for use, further promoting innovation and inclusiveness of artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

Alibaba's AI models, particularly the Qwen 2.5-Max and Wan 2.1, are making significant strides in the AI landscape. Alibaba Cloud is one of the first global technology companies to open source its own large-scale AI models, and as early as August 2023, it launched its first open source model Qwen (Qwen-7B). 

The open-source community is unstoppable! 🌟 To celebrate #OpenSourceWeek, we’re excited to open-source Wan2.1—the #1 Hugging Face foundation video model and the only open-source video generation model in the VBench top 5. Let’s keep on supporting open-source together!🤝

Check… https://t.co/PrkFv2iWDT

— Alibaba Group (@AlibabaGroup) February 26, 2025

Wan 2.1 is designed to generate highly realistic visuals and has already secured a top ranking on VBench, a leaderboard for video generative models. Alibaba has released Wan 2.1, each capable of generating images and videos from text and image input. These models are available globally on Alibaba Cloud's ModelScope and HuggingFace platforms.

In addition to Wan 2.1, Alibaba has also introduced a preview version of its reasoning model, QwQ-Max, which it plans to make open source upon the full release. This strategic move aligns with Alibaba's broader AI ambitions, as the company has announced plans to invest at least $52 billion over the next three years to bolster its cloud computing and AI infrastructure.

The Qwen 2.5-Max model is part of Alibaba's open-source Qwen series and is designed to process long, complex queries and engage in nuanced conversations. It has been benchmarked against models like OpenAI's GPT-4, DeepSeek-V3, and Meta's Llama-3.1-405B, and has shown superior performance in several areas.

This open-source initiative is expected to foster innovation, lower barriers to entry, and position Alibaba as a formidable player in the AI space.

Alibaba in its announcement press release said — Training video-based models requires huge computing resources and a large amount of high-quality training data. Open source helps lower the barrier to entry for more companies to use AI, enabling them to create high-quality visualization content that meets their needs in a cost-effective manner.

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Among them, the T2V-14B model is more suitable for generating high-quality visual effects with rich motion dynamics, while the T2V-1.3B model strikes a balance between generation quality and computing power, making it an ideal choice for developers for secondary development and academic research. For example, the T2V-1.3B model allows users to generate a 5-second, 480p resolution video in about 4 minutes using only an ordinary laptop.