China's AI Model Blitz: Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Max and DeepSeek's Ultra-Cheap V4-Flash Challenge Silicon Valley

Alibaba launched Qwen3.8-Max, its largest AI model to date with 2.4 trillion parameters, claiming performance rivaling Anthropic's Claude Fable 5. The model scores 86.1 on the OSWorld-Verified benchmark, outpacing GPT-5.6 Sol Max (83.2) and Fable 5 (85.0) in autonomous software engineering tasks. With a 1-million-token context window and multimodal capabilities, it's priced aggressively at $2 per million input tokens — significantly undercutting US rivals. Open-weights...