Alibaba eyes physical world with its first suite of AI models for robots

Alibaba unveils Qwen robot models to push AI beyond chatbots, as embodied intelligence becomes the next frontier in global AI

Alibaba Group Holding has launched its first suite of artificial intelligence models for robots, joining a global race to move AI out of chatbot windows and into the physical world.

The Hangzhou-based tech giant on Tuesday introduced the Qwen Robot Suite, marking its latest foray into “embodied AI” – machines that can perceive, reason and interact with physical environments.

Developed by Alibaba’s AI research unit, Tongyi Lab, the suite has already entered pilot testing with selected Alibaba Cloud enterprise clients, according to the company.

Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

The suite splits robot intelligence into three interconnected layers. Qwen-RobotNav, a vision-language navigation model, is designed to help machines understand and move through physical spaces.

It works in tandem with Qwen-RobotWorld, a video “world model” that lets robots predict and simulate how physical scenes will evolve before they take action.

Then the physical execution is handled by Qwen-RobotManip, a generalist vision-language-action (VLA) model built on the Qwen3.5-4B architecture.