Exceeding 3 Billion Downloads Compared to Google's 418 Million and Meta's 227 Million
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is experiencing significant growth in China, with open-source AI models from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. achieving over 3 billion global downloads in the past six months. This surpasses models from Meta and Google, as well as their domestic competitors in China, making them the most downloaded AI models in the world.
The Chinese technology company explained in an emailed statement that its AI model family, "Coin," has released over 460 open-source models, and its ecosystem has generated more than 300,000 derived models.
HuggingFace, a popular open-source modeling platform, reported that Google, owned by Alphabet, recorded 418 million downloads.
Alibaba Surpasses Meta and Google
Meta recorded 227 million downloads in 2026, and the platform published a report on the state of open-source models on August 14.
Experts explain that open-source models allow for downloading, customizing, and using them as fundamental building blocks for new AI products, making their adoption an indicator of the technologies developers choose to build upon.
Download figures and the number of AI models derived are among the metrics of influence in the AI race between the US and China, as Chinese software developers, including Alibaba, strive to develop efficient, relatively low-cost, and easily modifiable models. The rise of Coin models suggests that this strategy is gaining momentum outside of China.
Alibaba, along with companies like Moonshot AI, DeepSec, and other Chinese AI model developers, aims to emulate the performance of advanced models, attempting to close the gap with closed-source US models such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
• Chips and AI Systems
Export controls on chips and AI systems, such as the temporary ban imposed this summer on foreign access to Anthropic’s Fable 5 model, don’t appear to be curbing Chinese competitors.
In this context, a report by Hacking Face explained that download data for Alibaba’s Coin models makes it “one of the biggest pillars of the open-source AI ecosystem.”
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The Hangzhou-based Chinese tech giant Alibaba, active in cloud computing, e-commerce, and AI, is ahead of its domestic competitors, such as DeepSec, Moonshot Chemie, and MiniMax, as well as American models.
• Coin and Alibaba’s Virtual Workflow
The Hacking Face report stated: “Coin has become part of the default workflow for developers when defining and deploying the models they want to fine-tune.”
A wide range of models can create a self-supporting, integrated environment; The more developers adopt these models, the more versions of them will emerge, attracting new users in turn.
The Chinese company Alibaba has amplified this cycle by distributing its "Coin" platform to enterprise customers across Southeast Asia and Africa via its cloud platform, giving it a level of reach that many competitors lack.
As a result of Alibaba's remarkable success, major American tech companies have begun to support this new trend. In recent weeks, Meta and Nvidia have launched new open AI models as competition intensifies for developers.
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