Jake’s Take: Why Joe Tsai’s Accessible AI Vision Could Win the Race

Some fascinating comments recently from Alibaba Group Chairman Joe Tsai on the company’s vision and strategy for AI.

Tsai recently spoke at a fireside during the World Government Summit in Dubai and penned an op-ed in the South China Morning Post. His key message? The AI race isn’t about developing the most powerful general intelligence—it’s about making AI accessible, cost-effective, and useful.

Pointing to the buzz around low-cost model DeepSeek, Tsai says that the most important frontier in AI is about creating real-world applications that drive real-world economic impact.

In line with that view, Tsai and Alibaba are big proponents of open-source. Alibaba was one of the first major tech companies to open source its LLMs (the Qwen family of LLMs), and today, over 90,000 Qwen-based derivative models have been developed globally.

Open-source makes AI more democratic, allowing businesses of all sizes to build specialized, task-specific models that solve real-world problems. At WPIC Marketing + Technologies, we’ve been investing in building these task-specific models across all aspects of our operations—from logistics to marketing to e-store management—to optimize profits for our brand partners.

Apple has also tapped Alibaba to roll out iPhones’ AI services in China, reinforcing the company’s role as a leader in China’s AI ecosystem.

As the next phase of AI development unfolds, the AI companies that win will be those that lower costs, improve accessibility, and create AI applications that deliver tangible business value. That’s the direction Alibaba is heading—and it’s an exciting one to watch.