Alibaba plans to ask major users of the next version of its Qwen open-source AI model to share revenue from the offering, according to two people familiar with the company's strategy. The move follows a similar clause in Moonshot's Kimi K3 license and shows Chinese AI labs settling on a commercial model as their open-source releases rival US competitors.
Qwen3.8-Max, like Moonshot's Kimi K3, is an open-weight model - developers can download the underlying settings and adapt the system. US developers OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google keep their models closed. Alibaba plans to implement the revenue-sharing measure next week, the sources said, requesting anonymity because the plans are not public.
To date, Alibaba has charged developers for using its models on its own cloud platform but allowed most open-source offerings to run in customers' data centers without payment. The revenue-sharing plan targets the largest commercial users of the next Qwen model.
Revenue-sharing terms
Moonshot's Kimi K3 license requires anyone offering the model as a service and generating more than $20 million in annual sales to reach a commercial agreement with Moonshot. The company is seeking up to a 30% revenue share, one source said. Alibaba also plans to ask for a revenue share, but the rate is still being discussed.
Chinasoft International, a Chinese IT services provider, disclosed a revenue-sharing agreement with Moonshot in a regulatory filing last month without giving the percentage. The White House has accused Moonshot of stealing technology from Anthropic; Chinese officials rejected the claim as unfounded.
The freemium playbook
The Chinese firms are following a common playbook from Silicon Valley: offer software at low or zero cost, then charge for heavy commercial use and additional services. For teams evaluating Generative AI and LLM options, the licensing terms are part of the total cost.
"You pay for collaboration with these open-weight model labs to make sure that you're optimizing your deployment. You pay for getting early access for the next revision of the model," said Paddy Srinivasan, CEO of cloud computing firm DigitalOcean Holdings, which offers Kimi K3 and other Chinese models. He confirmed his company has a commercial agreement with Moonshot but declined to discuss specifics. "This is a tried and tested open-source 'freemium' model."
Kimi K3 costs about a third of Anthropic's Fable model based on listed input and output token prices. Dan Fu, vice president of kernels at Together AI, said companies that offer AI software make money by optimizing the service, such as improving token use. "At the application layer, there's value out there for how you use it, how you actually get the models and the tokens to do something useful," Fu said.
US open-source models are coming
Open-source AI is growing in the US as well. Thinking Machines Lab, the San Francisco startup founded last year by OpenAI's former CTO Mira Murati, released its first open-source model last month and is expected to follow with more powerful ones.
"I don't see a fundamental barrier" to powerful open-source US models, said Lin Qiao, CEO and co-founder of Silicon Valley-based Fireworks AI, who declined to discuss her company's commercial arrangements with Moonshot. "We are really waiting for that to happen."
Why this matters for IT and development professionals
For developers and IT teams evaluating open-source models, the revenue-sharing clauses change the cost calculation. A model that appears free can carry a commercial obligation once usage crosses revenue thresholds. Teams building products on Qwen or Kimi K3 should review licensing terms before integrating the models into commercial offerings.
AI for IT & Development teams should also factor potential revenue-sharing into their business plans as more Chinese models enter the market.
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