Look out Nvidia Alibaba reveals its most powerful AI models for robots as it looks to strike ahead in agentic race

Date:
Tue, 23 Jun 2026 19:20:00 +0000

Description:
Alibaba is looking to expand into the physical world by launching its first suite of AI models for robots amid a broadening global AI race.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Alibaba's Tongyi Lab unveils
the Qwen Robot Suite Its first embodied-AI models are split into navigation (RobotNav), a video "world model" (RobotWorld), and manipulation (RobotManip) The move comes after Nvidia recently unveiled and published its own Cosmos 3 offerings As much of its AI competition continues to focus on LLMs and making them faster and more capable, Alibaba might be looking to lead on another frontier altogether, along with its LLM ambitions in tow: robots.

The company's Tongyi Lab has unveiled the Qwen Robot Suite, what it calls a family of models focused on "embodied AI," which centers on enabling machines to perceive space, reason, and act accordingly. This comes at the heels of Nvidia 's own Cosmos 3, a frontier model for physical AI, further bolstering CEO Jensen Huang's narrative that China's developer ecosystem remains relatively unaffected by chip restrictions, even as focus in the West continues to shift to power for many of the sprawling data centers being
built in the US. Latest Videos From Watch full video here: A competitor or a complement to Nvidia's playbook? The Qwen-Robot Suite consists of three core models: Qwen-RobotManip, a generalizable vision-language-action model; Qwen-RobotNav, a scalable vision-language navigation model; and Qwen-RobotWorld, a video world model designed for embodied intelligence.

There is no denying, however, that robotics is being treated as perhaps the most crucial frontier for AI, even as LLMs continue to advance, with both Google and Nvidia among the companies pouring billions into research on their respective Gemini Robotics and open source Cosmos offerings. You may like Nvidia, Unitree, and Sharpa are making the most capable humanoid robots yet Microsoft AI CEO outlines hopes to build humanist superintelligence Humanoid robots wont be the future: purpose-built robots will

Alibaba claims that the model, which leverages a more lightweight Qwen3.5-4B model rather than its Qwen 3.7 Max, which features over a trillion
parameters, manages to top the RoboChallenge real-robot benchmark, scoring an impressive 59.83 and a 45% task success rate.

With other interested parties such as Tencent, Unitree, AgiBot, UBTech, Galbot, Spirit AI, and GigaAI, in addition to interest from EV firms
including Xpeng and Xiaomi, all shaping the future of Chinese AI robotics,
R&D in the industry is continuing at full swing, even as upcoming IPOs are expected to further propel the industry forward with easier access to
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The South China Morning Post , a wholly owned subsidiary of Alibaba, noted that "Alibabas entry comes as embodied intelligence is fast becoming the next frontier in global AI."

Nvidia's position on the matter is perhaps more nuanced with it attempting to behave as an 'enabler' versus a direct competitor as it pushes its
open-source model to perhaps form the same building block that CUDA does for GPUs with Cosmos, GR00T, Isaac and similar offerings being the playbook this time around to ensure future robotics platforms are built, much like most AI tools, around Nvidia's hardware and software stack.

Alibaba's announcement might not be a sign of the Chinese giant out-engineering Nvidia, but in the backdrop of the Chinese government insisting informally at least, on a decoupling or at a minimum, no reliance
on US-based hardware or software, it can be seen as an intent to build a similar ecosystem for Chinese robotics companies. What to read next Huawei just dropped a major AI chip surprise AI is now useful: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang thinks a new era for AI is here China cracks down on Western models while US companies flock to DeepSeek

In the absence of Nvidia's presence in China, it might be hard to compare the two offerings, even as their scales differ considerably: Cosmos 3 is an open-world foundation model with multiple vendor-reported scores that do not cover RoboChallenge, whereas Alibaba's are self-reported from exactly one benchmark. Until both approaches can be compared directly, one can not assume superiority of one over the other.

What is, however, perhaps painfully obvious for Nvidia, and has been warned
of time and again by its CEO, is that China, irked by US policies around AI, is no longer looking for chips, models, or even open source solutions to incorporate into its ecosystem, but wishes to build them from the ground up.

This could result in a lack of exposure to what was the second most lucrative market for the chip designer, a move that could cost it billions of dollars
in revenue in the robotics segment alone, from what is still widely
considered the "factory of the world" due to its huge manufacturing base. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.



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