Alibaba recruits ex-DeepMind researcher for Qwen AI team

Alibaba has recruited Zhou Hao as head of post-training research for its Qwen AI team, sources said.

Zhou holds a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was a key contributor to Google DeepMind projects including Gemini 3, AI Mode, and Deep Research, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Zhou replaces researcher Yu Bowen, who left this week, while no successor has been named for technical lead Lin Junyang.

Alibaba launched its consumer Qwen app in November and released the Qwen-3.5 open-source model series last month, which led download figures on Hugging Face, sources said.

🔗 Source: South China Morning Post

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Qwen leadership changes suggest a shift in direction

Technical lead Lin Junyang, known for backing open source, left after his team shipped the open-source Qwen-3.5 model series. VentureBeat writes that Lin helped drive Qwen past 600 million downloads 1.
Zhou Hao reportedly joined from Google DeepMind as Alibaba folded its consumer Qwen app and AI glasses teams into one group to simplify its commercial AI plans 2.
Some critics call the move a “Gemini-fication,” with Qwen moving from research-led work toward product work tied to daily active user metrics 1.
Alibaba also wants the Qwen app to work as an “agent” that carries out user commands while linking tightly to Alipay and Taobao 3.

Alibaba’s shift could shrink open-weight options

If Qwen steps back from open-source or open-weight releases, the global community could lose a widely used Eastern counterweight to models from Western labs 1.
Alibaba says more than 90,000 enterprises have adopted Qwen, a company-cited figure. Leadership and org changes may raise questions about what comes next 4.
The reorg also backs Alibaba’s AI hardware push, with plans for glasses, earbuds, and rings that embed AI and treat Qwen as a cross-device interface 5.
This puts Alibaba up against Meta’s Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. Separate 36Kr-reported claims relayed by KrASIA say OpenAI has reportedly built a hardware team of more than 2,000 people 5.