The global market now has access to free video generation artificial intelligence models from Alibaba. On Wednesday, the Chinese technology company Alibaba released four models from its Wan2.1 series through open-source access for generating images and videos from text and image inputs.
The AI models are accessible through Alibaba Cloud’s Model Scope and Hugging Face, which serve as popular platforms for model deployment. Alibaba provides its advanced AI technology free of charge to researchers and businesses worldwide, which intensifies competition against industry leaders including OpenAI. The Hong Kong-listed shares of Alibaba experienced a 5% increase shortly after the company made its announcement. Alibaba’s decision to offer free AI models emerged during a period of expanding open-source AI interest after DeepSeek released its cost-effective AI model in January using basic Nvidia chips.
The public has complete access to modify and enhance open-source models since they differ from proprietary models like those developed by OpenAI. Through this methodology, both innovation and community development occur for AI development. The open-source approach to AI meets hesitation about upcoming AI commercial trends due to ongoing discussions about future AI model standardization.
Alibaba and DeepSeek, among other Chinese companies, drive advancement in open-source AI technology. Alibaba launched its entry into this market segment in August 2023 and has achieved notable market expansion since then. Meta operates as a significant open-source AI participant in the United States through its Llama model development. The stock price of Alibaba has increased by 66% in 2025 because of its financial strength alongside its AI development contributions and Chinese government backing of private sector companies.
