Alibaba’s Qwen-3 becomes world’s first AI model to operate in orbit

Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen-3 became the world’s first general-purpose artificial intelligence model to be uploaded and operated in orbit, marking a milestone in China’s bid to lead the nascent space-based computing sector. Chinese aerospace start-up Adaspace Technology successfully deployed Qwen-3 to a space computing centre in orbit where it executed multiple inference tasks in November, according to company executive vice-president Wang Yabo, who spoke at a conference on Monday, as reported by the...